Love Thine Enemy
by littlesoprano
Summary: [WICKED MusicalverseMGM film combo] When Dorothy accidentally comes across a grief stricken Glinda, she learns the truth about the Witch of the West... and reevaluates her relationship with another wicked witch in her life.
1. Shakes and Regret

Disclaimer: Elphaba and Glinda (as characterized in this story) belong to L. Frank Baum and Gregory Maguire. Fiyero is the creation of the latter. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Man, Toto, and the Wizard belong to the former. Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, Hickory, Zeke, Hunk, and Miss Gulch are the property of MGM. Any characters beyond that are mine, though that might not end up meaning much.

Notes:

First off—this contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the musical, and probably the novel as well. At least one ending surprise is given away. In short, no crying to me afterward if you read this and then are disappointed because you found out more than you wanted to know.

This is technically a Musicalverse/MGM Film crossover, but in the grand tradition of Wickfic it also contains certain details and background info from the Maguire novel. There are also shadings of Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Elphaba, Glinda, et all are based off the musical's characterizations, more specifically as played by Stephanie J. Block and Katie Adams. Dorothy is based off Judy Garland in the film.

The song is from a deleted scene in the film in which Dorothy and the gang return to the Emerald City after having done in the Witch of the West. The timeline is set after Glinda meets with the Wizard and Madame Morrible, but before "No One Mourns the Wicked."

Love Thine Enemy

Chapter 1

It had been going on for hours. It showed no signs of stopping. Who wanted to cut short a national holiday? Not the citizens of the Emerald City, dancing in the streets. Not the shopkeepers, money rolling into their coffers. Not the barkeeps, selling pint after pint of green-dyed ale.

The celebration of the Witch of the West's death had begun as a triumphal entry parade for the witch-slayers, marching them up to the gates of the Wizard's palace amid songs and cheers. Though all were the city's champions, it was the smallest and seemingly meekest among them—the girl, Dorothy--whom they most revered. Her feet didn't touch the ground from the time the crowd was upon her. They swept her along in their arms—loving and careful for all their haste and excitement—while all the time other hands reached up to touch her shining slippers, the edge of her pinafore, her hair ribbons. Whether this was an act of near-worship or the desire to somehow vicariously claim a part of the triumph over the monstrous Wicked Witch was difficult to discern.

Either way, the girl's eyes had been stark open to the whites-- overwhelmed if not horrified altogether.

Now, even though the dazed young heroine and her companions had long since entered and left the chambers, the celebration had waxed and not waned in its intensity. Most of the citizens had gone back to their homes, but those who did not more than made up for their numbers. The parade spiraled out of control—as mob scenes are wont to do—into the most perverse funeral service that Oz had ever seen. The citizens who had bayed for the Witch's blood were now drunk on it, drunk on the ale, drunk on their own misdirected sense of battle victory, drunk on the power of the crowd. Everywhere buckets of water were thrown; everywhere the wet recipients sank laughing to the ground. Some writhed there on the streets, grotesque. Puppet plays were held in hastily-construed booths, all depicting in melodramatic—even crude—fashion the death of the Witch. Effigies burned in countless places.

_And these_, thought Glinda the Good, _are the ones whose love I sold myself for_.

She watched from far above, on the balcony of the lavish suite of rooms she kept for her stays in the Emerald City. From there she could not see the near-rabid ugliness of those gleeful faces, though she could see enough. It was as close as she trusted herself, and yet she wished she could be anywhere else in Oz or out of it… at cold Kiamo Ko, even, with its pathetic little puddle of what was left of her best friend. There she would be allowed to mourn, at least. Up until now she had not been able to slip away to be alone with her grief-- not with so many happy and eager citizens pressing against her with their questions and with their rejoicing that she was expected to share. Not with so many new responsibilities she now shouldered, and with so much to _do._

That was fitting, she thought, because she had not earned the right to give in to her mourning-- that comfort, that release. This was her penance, to smile at the death of her friend. This was her punishment-- for Elphaba, and for dear Fiyero, whose death was unsung, out in some lonely sun-blasted field. (People always said that the wicked died alone, but the good did, too). She'd watched the people cry out against the so-called Witch of West so many times without a word…until it was too late. She'd had her reasons, to be sure, but she no longer cared. She deserved this.

_I deserve this._

She looked at the roiling clot of people below her-- humanity at its finest.

_We deserve each other._

Besides, she reminded herself, she had to practice: to smile, and to wave, and to shut up. All her years of experience meant nothing now, with the two people she loved most in the world killed, one tragedy treading on the heel of another. It was one thing not to let them see her cry; Elphie had managed it for her whole life, hadn't she? It was another to smile, and to laugh, and to sing. She'd managed for Nessarose's death—that pitiful little body, crushed; it still made her eyes want to fill when she let herself think about it. She'd done more than manage; to her shame she'd begun the very song that now rang out for the second and last Thropp sister dead.1

**Hail, hail the witch is dead!**

**Which old witch? —the Wicked Witch!**

**Hail, hail the Wicked Witch is dead!**

The singing was loud and raucous, slurred and off-key. Verses blurred together. At least the Munchkinlanders had shown some restraint with their celebrating, and when Glinda was honest and very objective with herself she could understand their cause for joy a little. (It was still a death, a life lost). Nessa, much as she'd cared for her, had been an oppressive dictator, even if her cause was not power but the loneliness of an unrequited love. The means were different, the end the same. At least, Glinda thought, she had _done_ something, though she herself had it not in her heart to condemn her for it. What had Fiyero done, besides try to defend the woman he loved? And what had _Elphaba_ done, besides tell the truth no one wanted to hear? What had she done besides being the noblest and most courageous person the citizens of Oz would see? Besides being _different_? There was the matter of Dorothy, yes, but they'd hated Elphaba far before that hapless girl had ever dropped down through the swirling winds in her farmhouse.

**Summon up and sing—and ring the bells out!**

**Ding-dong, the merry-oh,**

**Sing it high! Sing it low!**

**Let them know the Wicked Witch is dead!**

A flash, and Glinda could see in her mind's eye the younger versions of Elphaba and herself, curled up companionably in the bench seat of their train compartment on that fateful trip to the Emerald City. She could recall the way the sunlight had streamed in through the windowpanes, flooding over the paneled walls and dark patterned carpets of the close room. It had seemed such a reflection of the bright future they'd been sure lay just before them. There was Elphaba, more real than a memory…

-------------------

_Elphaba sat with feet tucked under, her face completely relaxed and happy—a rare enough sight. Then again, she was more than half-asleep, and had been mumbling almost dreamily about the future for the space of the past few minutes._

"_And then you'll see, Galinda. I swear someday there'll be a celebration in all of Oz, just for us."_

_A mere two weeks before Glinda's rejoinder would have been-- 'of course!' Galinda Upland was simply made for parades, and balls, and celebrations of every kind—and if they were all for her, all the better. Naturally. Instead she smiled, but a little sadly, and didn't bother to correct the name. Honestly, she had begun to wonder if she should just swallow her pride, let the change go and hope everyone forgot about it in short order. The business with Fiyero of late had made her uncharacteristically gloomy-- but gloomy in the most positively dramatic way, and she was inclined to pout and sulk prettily at the smallest provocation. _

"_For you, maybe. I'm only here because you felt sorry for me, remember?" It was overdone, and both of them knew it. Still, below the surface, the words stung, because parts of them had parts of truth. It was Elphie who had been summoned by the Wizard, and Glinda would not have taken that away from her for anything in the world. No one could have been more deserving (and even if she hadn't been, Glinda still would not have wished it away from her). She could not admit to jealousy, because that would mean some kind of negative feeling towards Elphaba, and she had none. It was more a… disappointment with herself, a disappointment with the real world, somehow-- the end of what must have been some kind of life-long delusion. It had never occurred to her before Elphaba ran in with the news of her invitation that she would ever be left out of any good thing. Elphaba would work with the Wizard and have the wonderful life that came with it because she was talented and powerful and brilliant and many other worthy traits, and Galinda would have the same for the same reason she'd always had everything-- because she was Galinda. _

_It was an ugly feeling exposed, and Glinda did not like ugliness. She was feeling and experiencing so many different things since going to Shiz, and she did not like a good number of them, either._

_Elphaba's mouth quirked, as if forgiving her friend's theatrics. Her eyes met Glinda's, open all the way for a moment before slipping closed again. _

"_That's not true."_

_Then her head dropped down and lolled forward. Her sleeping body seemed uncertain of exactly where it wanted to go, and swayed first toward the far wall, then rather alarmingly toward the open air and eventually, the floor._

"_Oh, no you don't!" scolded Glinda, catching her and tugging her backward again. Even in sleep, Elphaba was dead stubborn, and it was not an easy task. With much rearranging she got Elphaba's head leaning comfortably on her shoulder and the rest of her reclining on the seat. Comfortable for Elphie, at any rate—Glinda was far from. Elphaba's chin was digging right into her collarbone, for one thing, and for another, Glinda just knew her arm, sandwiched between them, was going to be hopelessly and thoroughly squashed by the time they even reached the halfway marker. Still, she could hardly have her Elphie dropping off to sleep on her feet at the Wizard's palace, could she? Oh, no—that just would not do. She sighed at the realization of her own unselfishness, feeling a little better at her sacrifices on the altar of great friendship. Her hand reached up along the seat top and pulled down the light throw blanket that lay there. She draped it carefully around her sleeping friend, though in truth it was warm enough in the small compartment. It made her feel maternal…sisterly…something protective. Capable and strong, like Elphaba, who would never admit to needing taking care of._

"Well, you do now," she said, as if finishing her thoughts out loud. "You need your beauty sleep, you know. Girls who are going to have celebrations all over Oz—just for them—need to look their best."

_She decided she liked this new protective side of herself. In the earlier days of their friendship, she'd fussed over Elphie, but more as a project, almost a plaything. She'd been like the prized dolly in her collection—her favorite, because she was the most unique— but still a dolly, that she could dress up and paint and practice hairstyles on. _

_This was different. At least there was one new feeling that she liked. She managed to get her pinned arm free and then put both of them around her friend's shoulders. Elphaba was dead to the world. _

_Glinda decided right then and there that she would continue it, whether or not Elphaba acted like she needed it or not. Life might be hard, she was beginning to worry, even with all your dreams fulfilled. What were two best friends to do but look after one another? _

_She hugged Elphie a little tighter, ready to defend her against anything. Elphie slept on._

--------------------

Glinda came back to herself, away from the memories of happier days. There was no sunlight here. Instead, torchlight flickered in from below, illuminating a room full of tokens of false love. Elaborate flower arrangements spilled over every flat surface in her suite, most on the vanity table she now stood before. Were the flowers sent to congratulate her on her engagement, or on the death of her "enemy" witch?2

"Defend her?" she scoffed at herself, vitriol dripping. "Fine job you made of it."

**Ding-dong, the Witch is dead!**

**Which old witch?—the Wicked Witch!**

**Hail, hail, the Wicked Witch is dead!**

**Ha-ha-ha, ho-ho-ho and a couple of tra-la-las!**

**Ha-ha-ha, ho-ho-ho in the merry old land of Oz!**

"You'll see, Galinda…" 

She saw. This celebration was not what doomed Elphaba had had in mind.

**We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz!**

**Let him know the Wicked Witch is dead!**

The Wizard… Glinda thought of the former ruler as she'd just left him, clutching that green bottle, clutching his heart. A sentimental man, always longed to be a father— who'd all unknowing sent for the murder of his one and only child. He was broken; a powerful ruler (if only powerful at manipulation) for years shattered in mere moments. Elphaba had brought him down at last but would never know it. He'd never be right again, and Glinda, with all her new hardness of heart, did not care.

Tra-la-las, indeed.

What was worse—that he'd sent a little girl to kill a witch he thought was dangerous, or that he'd sent a girl with a mob following to kill a witch he knew was not? What Glinda could not understand was _why_ he'd done it. Only weeks before he'd tried to defend her life from what he'd thought was a threatening Fiyero, even exposing his real identity in the process. He'd certainly admired her. _"She has such pluck, such… individuality. That_ _counts for everything, where I come from,"_ he would say, or too many times to count_—"if only we could bring her back, if only…"_ No one would have believed it, but their mutual feelings for Elphaba had been a point of commonality between herself and the Wizard_. "I feel a bond with her, Glinda—it's very strange. I know her, and I don't know why." _She could have sworn, once, that he'd even loved her.

He'd just loved his image and power more.

With that, Glinda burst into tears.

Commonality.

Ding-dong, the Witch is dead! 

**Which old witch? —the Wicked Witch!**

**Hail, Hail, the Wicked Witch is dead!**

"Stop, stop," she whimpered, and then her voice rose, harsh and ugly. Her vocal chords, unused to such demands, scraped roughly, painfully. "STOP IT!"

The crowd rose to meet the challenge, reaching a fever pitch.

**SHE'S GONE WHERE THE GOBLINS GO!**

**BELOW, **

**BELOW,**

**BELOW—YO-HO!**

It became too much. They won. She lost. Glinda suddenly retched —whether from the perversity of the singing or from the sight of her own painted face in the vanity mirror. She hunched over, fierce pain erupting, and tried to purge herself. But she hadn't eaten since Elphaba died, and there was nothing to give. Folding in on herself, she shook with sickness and spent energy, before hating her own weakness and staggering angrily upright again. Fingers tore at her jeweled tiara—clawing, grasping—and it ripped free, taking blonde hair with it. As soon as it was in her hand, she flung it, sending it skittering over the vanity dresser's top. Jars of powder and rouge and glitter crashed down, coming apart on the polished green floor. Glass amphorae of the finest perfume smashed open, bleeding out their precious contents. One small vase of flowers teetered for a moment before tumbling off the edge, taking another, larger one with it. Petals scattered, red against green. A sweep of Glinda's arm sent the remainder of their fellows to join them. Water pooled and puddled.

The mirror, with the hated truths it confronted her with so joyously, was her next target. A hand wouldn't do. Glinda took up her wand and swung it at the glass with all her strength. _Ridiculous thought._ The wand, more decorative than effectual, broke on impact—shattered. The sum of her strength only sent a little flurry of papers from a nearby table swirling to the ground. She followed them-- sinking, collapsing in a heap of blue ruffles and tears. They weren't the dainty, ladylike sniffles her mother had so carefully taught her—tears that could be worked for the proper effect _("especially with gentlemen,_ _Galinda, remember that"_). She sobbed, and then she choked on them, drowning.

The sounds of her misery were deafening, and so it was that she didn't hear the hesitant arrival of three pairs of feet.

One pair stopped, uncertain. The other two trotted along, no compunction in the world, up to the side of the Good Witch of the North. The owner of the feet, obviously disturbed by her violent grief, opened its head… and began to yap loudly.

Glinda cracked open one watery eye and saw, blurred almost to nonrecognition, a small, dark terrier. She knew who it was, and she knew who was with him. Her head jerked around over her shoulder as she remained hunkered near the ground—looking for all the world like a steel-trapped animal—hurt and wild and angry and in more pain than was imaginable.

The girl, Dorothy, stood in shock.

"East and West. Come to add another notch to your compass?" came a bitter voice.

Glinda lips turned up, not prettily. It seemed she could almost hear the voice of her dead friend in her mind, adding biting commentary to this most interesting of situations—a situation that went to prove that life did indeed have a sense of humor.

Then she realized that the voice hadn't been Elphaba's. It was her own, and out loud.

Glinda stared; Dorothy shrank.

Toto, unperturbed, began to gnaw at the bruised flowers on the ground.

1 This is both true and untrue of the MGM film. Glinda does indeed begin the song "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" with her phrase "let the joyous news be spread, the wicked old witch at last is dead." However, she does not sing along.

2 It may seem like I've made a timeline error here. Yes, there was a gap between the engagement party/Fiyero's "death" and Elphaba's melting—really, however long it took Dorothy and Co. to get to the Emerald City and then to Kiamo Ko. However, the general populace probably was not aware of Fiyero's death. That's hardly something the Wizard would want getting out until a suitable story could be formulated. Therefore, Glinda could have still been getting flowers.


	2. The Wicked Witch of the North?

Author's Notes: Though this story is a combo of the musical and classic film, in matters of plot dispute it defaults to the musical. Therefore, Dorothy never met Elphaba prior to the incident at Kiamo Ko, and Elphaba does not have any green-skinned guards. However, she does throw fire. (: Also, I seem to have veered a bit towards Maguire's version of Dorothy, particularly in the flashback.

Chapter 2: The Wicked Witch of the North?

Dorothy was beginning to think, not for the first time, that she did not like Oz. Nothing was as it seemed, unlike the small, straightforward little town she'd been born and bred in. It was certainly more beautiful, but with so much beauty came an unsettling price. Apple trees came alive and struck at you. Horses changed color before one's very eyes. Happy citizens became mobs. Great and Powerful Wizards proved themselves to be nothing but humbugs. Good Witches became as frightening as the wicked ones.

Glinda, Witch of the North, had been the most unbelievably beautiful person—no, not only the most beautiful person, but the most beautiful _thing_ -- Dorothy had ever seen in her life, floating down in her bubble, all glittering and graceful. Most beautiful things, in Dorothy's experience, were far more lovely at a distance—what looked like a perfect rose in the yard showed itself to be torn and browning at the edges when one came near it, or what appeared to be a lush green field of grass in the distance turned out to be choked with weeds. Flaws always appeared at closer inspection. Glinda had broken this seeming law of nature, for she was far more breathtaking at six inches than she was at sixty feet, and rather than illuminating flaws, a closer look only highlighted the fact that she possessed none. She'd been…ethereal, _unreal_…like a doll come to life with her porcelain skin and golden curls, or like a princess, having stepped right from the pages of a child's storybook. She'd been exactly how Dorothy would imagine Cinderella to look, were Cinderella real, or Sleeping Beauty, or the Good Fairy—all swirling soft pastel gowns, diamond tiaras, constant smiles and a voice of spun sugar. She was what princes fought dragons and climbed towers for. Glinda had seemed the epitome of all that was good and right, just as the Witch of the West, with her black robes and green skin and hellish cackling laugh, had been the pure image of evil.

How swiftly things could change in Oz, without any warning at all.

'_People come and go so quickly here.'_

Dorothy had been almost less afraid of the Wicked Witch than she was of Glinda now, and Dorothy, back in Kansas, had not been afraid of anyone—not even Miss Gulch, and most of the state was afraid of _her_. The Witch of the West had behaved the way one would think a wicked witch would—if one had ever given the matter any thought. At least she had known what to expect, if even a little. Though the outlook had been bad, at least she hadn't been bound to the terror of complete uncertainty. It was a note of that brand of fear that held her rooted to the floor now. Glinda was not behaving the way she was supposed to. Dorothy thought suddenly of the one time she'd seen Aunt Em—a teetotaler if there ever was one—giddy and laughing out nonsense from drink. (No one had ever been able to figure out why she'd done it, and no one dared ask. Dorothy, very young at the time, had tried, giggling, and got her hands slapped for her audacity).

This was worse—oh so much worse. What was it, that had sent her into this state? The Good Witch looked at once cornered and defensive, trapped but dangerous. Not quite feral…almost beaten. Haunted. Her hair was animal-like, wild and hand-torn with curls unraveled. Beneath each eye were tears, but not ordinary tears—swaths and waterfalls, the wet of them looking like they'd been painted on with a thick brush. Dorothy had never seen such tears—not even at the double funeral of her poor dear parents; she didn't even know someone could cry them. Glinda must have worn some sort of dark makeup on her lashes, for it had mixed and ran down in nightmarish streaks.

A nightmare. Was that all Oz was—a nightmare? Would everything lovely about it turn so? Glinda had been Dorothy's one comforting constant in this strange, storybook world—_absolute good. _If she could change, what else might… or _whom _else? Would the Tin Man, so devoted and protective, be next, coming after her with his axe? Would the bashful Lion tear them all to pieces? The kind Scarecrow had already begun acting a bit strangely—as if he'd suddenly remembered something he'd forgotten--ever since they had received their order from the Wizard.

"I didn't mean to come in here," said Dorothy (for she had to say _something_,) twisting her hands, a picture of earnestness. She wanted to ask what was wrong, for she had no idea what could have caused such a terrible expression of grief, but she could not. It was too close, too personal, and she scarcely knew the Witch of the North. "I was looking for a place to…hide. " Glinda looked up and met her eyes, and it was the saddest sight she'd ever seen. Her words faltered. Dorothy looked down and away in sympathetic modesty, as her fear loosened its grip. "I guess I was running away again. From all of _that_," she stressed, gesturing out the window. "It doesn't seem right." She didn't explain _what_ wasn't right, exactly; she didn't have to. She supposed she could understand the people's happiness, in a way, if the witch had been as cruel to them as she had been to her. She'd turned the Tin Man into tin, hadn't she, and made the Lion a coward? (How, though, she wondered, could anyone be _made_ to be a coward?) Surely she must have done such horrible things over and over, to make the people hate and fear her so. Still, she had been, Dorothy thought, a _person_… and she herself was just that—only a _person_. The Munchinklanders had made her a national heroine, but they had not looked at her in the way the people below had looked at her. There had been a parade. Awards. The promise of a place in their Hall of Fame. These citizens, with their dark reverence (or was it, she thought in horror, almost worship?) had shaken her to the very core, made her insides freeze solid.

Really, it was all a little _much_ for girl whose biggest acclaim had lately been winning second place in her class spelling bee.

It must have been too much for the gentle Scarecrow, too, for he'd disappeared as well.

--------------------

There was nothing for Glinda to do but to get up. She had rarely been caught with pretenses down; she did not know what else _to_ do, and mostly for the moment she did not care, either. Her heart was sick, and she was tired. She could not wipe off the tear-tracks, plaster on a fake smile and charm away what the girl had seen. She didn't have it in her yet, though she could feel, to her self-disgust, the ends of her mouth want to strain upwards—a lifetime of conditioning and instinct at work. It didn't matter; it was too late. Dorothy had seen everything, and that fact loomed like a white elephant in the suite that neither of them would acknowledge. Glinda gave up trying, turned to the hated mirror again and began rubbing at the wetness on her face. It was atrociously rude, turning one's back on a guest—her society acquaintances would have been appalled. However, Dorothy was not a guest, for one thing. Glinda did not recall inviting her, and bit back a scathing remark to that effect, one that would be certain to heighten the girl's great discomfort further. Her restraint was not due to kindness, but necessity. She couldn't look at Dorothy now, could not acknowledge her further-- not when she desperately needed to regain some measure of control. The girl needed to leave, needed to be out of her sight, so that she could _think._ Dorothy was a dark cloud, a swarm of buzzing insects against her brain. She had to invent some kind of covering lie that would explain…everything… but her unfettered grief had left her unable to think much at all. _('Don't say it, Elphie—that one's beneath you.')_ Her head throbbed; every process of her mind going on as if on gummed and rusted cogs.

The silence was long, though it was not a total silence at all, not with the wild celebration below. There were tiny sounds, too…were those the clicks of retreating footsteps, Glinda wondered, as she wiped off the scalding tears? Was that the swinging open of a door? No. Dorothy remained, and moved, and Glinda, unwilling, caught her reflection in the mirror. She saw her, this witch-killer in a blue-checked dress, and felt a fresh, hot mixture of emotions churn in her blood, making her hands quiver and twitch involuntarily. Her fingertips went hot all at once without her bidding, and was that the scent of scorched air? A single spark hissed and there was a whiff, definite now, of sulfur. Dorothy hadn't left, even though she'd made her apology. She was hovering anxiously, and Glinda wanted to laugh. She did laugh, on the inside, but it was not a laugh she had laughed before—not sweet and airy and well-practiced, nor the nearly hysterical giggles of her teenage years. It was knowing and ironic. The child was _worried_ for her! Oh, of all the precious things!

Or, really… was it? A new thought made Glinda's face harden and twist. Had they all been deceived by this picture of simple girlish innocence? Had Elphaba's suspicions been right all along? Elphaba, Elphaba—when had she ever been _wrong_? East and West… were they accidents, really, as the girl so fervently insisted? Accidents— '_but ah, my pretty, you seem to have a lot of accidents that involve witches.'_ Dorothy _could_ have been working with Madame Morrible, with the Wizard—why could it not be? First Nessa, then Elphie, and now she'd come to off her, too. Oh, didn't they know it would be terrible press? Killing Glinda the Good— Oz wasn't ready for that yet; they didn't know. Besides, they had to be running out of original methods to kill someone by now. Death by house, death by melting—those would be so very difficult to top. What would it be for the Witch of the North? Death by cute little dog, perhaps? She turned then, staring fully at her could-be killer.

No.

It would be death by sympathy today.

One look into the girl's face and a flood of cold water was dashed on the furnace inside. It hurt—sizzling madly, sending embers. Would she start the fire again? Glinda's bitterness was metallic in her mouth, and she'd thrummed with the feel of the boiling blood beneath her cool skin. It was rare to her, this feeling, and she knew from painful experience that nothing good or right could come of it. (_'Use her sister… and then you'll have her.'_) It was a weapon she could not wield—unless she turned it on herself. She would have to see things as they were, fully and honestly, or she would be lost. Honesty-- not a trait she had utilized much, working for the wizard. (What had she called it? _Ah, yes_. '_Being encouraging.'_) She _must not_ let her anger run away with her…

…Especially not anger that was so misplaced. There were two women in that mirror, and Glinda knew she was directing her rage at the wrong one.

No, Elphaba _had_ been mistaken, and Glinda forced herself to see what her friend couldn't. She'd been witness to Dorothy's reaction to both deaths—neither had been intentional. She was the least guilty of any of them, even if it was from her unknowing hands that the fatal water was thrown. She was a child, for one thing—or not too far from-- with a child's natural black-and-white view of the world and a tendency to believe what adult authority told her. It wasn't evil; it was immaturity. Dorothy was a foreigner in their world—an outsider-- straightforward, honest, unsophisticated. Outspoken and brave. Elphaba, in different circumstances, would probably have liked her—the cruelest of ironies. Glinda made herself remember that.

She made herself also remember what she had seen, hidden in the trees, on the day after Dorothy and her companions had their first meeting with the Wizard. She hadn't been invited to that meeting, of course, and it was at least some small comfort to know that the Wizard and Morrible had counted on her concern enough to ban her. They'd at least believed that she had enough love for her friend left, despite it all, that she might try to stop them, that she might try to save Elphie.

What a very small scrap of cold comfort that was, but scraps, for all her riches and finery and adulation, were all Glinda the Good had left.

She wouldn't have thought it unusual, her exclusion from the meeting, for she was rarely privy to the actual workings of the Wizard's regime and had preferred it that way. She'd been a figurehead, not much more—a pretty singing canary in the bubble-shaped cage she'd made for herself. But Fiyero's torture had burst that bubble, sending her out of the skies and smashing into the hard ground of reality. Her world was jarred, her eyes opened. She'd been desperate for news of him, and for news of Elphaba, whom she was worried for and about. There were so many rumors, more even than usual.

She'd wanted to know why Dorothy and her little band were traveling west.

--------------------

"_How much further do you think it is?" asked Dorothy, worriedly plucking at the edge of her pinafore. Her eyes were fixed to the westward-setting sun, making Glinda wonder what the girl expected to see there. The little dog, Toto, followed his owner's gaze for a moment, then seemingly grew annoyed with her introspection and sought out more interesting avenues of exploration. He sniffed along the edges of the clearing where the band had made their camp, causing Glinda to sink lower into the cover of the surrounding trees and shrubs. Her mind nimbly flew through a list of spells she could use to silence any potential warning barks, or else to cloak invisibility around her own person. It was all new to her, this spying, and she had not come prepared. What was she becoming, a Gale Force scout?_

_It was the wrong image to use. Visions of dark green coats swarmed her, green coats and vicious smiles, Fiyero in their grasp, hung on a pole... Glinda's eyes shut, welling. Where was her handsome prince, now? _

"_It's a long ways, yet," spoke the Tin Man kindly, answering Dorothy's question as he split logs for a fire that only the girl would need to ward off the cold night air. She was already huddled near a crude lean-to, her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around. The Lion hunched nearby, skittish from the noises of the forest he was supposed to rule. The Scarecrow was nowhere in sight._

"_I hope we never get there," Dorothy said, so quietly that Glinda, listening again, could scarcely hear her._

"_You don't need to worry about a thing. I'll protect you from that old witch." With that, he thumbed his nose at the western sky._

"_Elphie," whispered Glinda, deeply troubled, before she could catch herself. It was the first time she'd used the affectionate nickname since… since Fiyero. What was this about protection? Elphaba had been suspicious about the particulars of Nessarose's death, but surely she would not harm a child! No! Helping the oppressed and helpless was her life's work; for her to hurt a child would go against everything Glinda knew about her._

_Or thought she knew? She'd heard the reports, trickling in from scouts and traders in the Vinkus. The Witch of the West was in a rage, they'd said. Some feared she'd gone mad. But when—when—were any of the reports about Elphaba ever true? _

"_It's… it isn't that. It's just that--" Dorothy bit at one fingernail for a moment, then burst forth. "Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do!" With every word, her distress seemed to grow. " Maybe we could steal the broom… or, or we could just ask her for it. Maybe…"_

"_Ask her?" the Tin Man exploded, sending an echoing rattle through his metal torso. "Ask her! She's the Wicked Witch of the West!" he exclaimed, as if the very name itself explained everything._

"_It's true," quivered the Lion. "If you thought the Witch of the East was bad..." he shuddered again for emphasis._

"_I didn't know the Witch of the East," said the girl softly._

"_That's a mercy for you," said the Tin Man, but he had turned away, voice dropping._

"_Glinda said that the Witch of the West is worse. Is that true?" asked Dorothy, but there was no accusation in her tone, only a need to confirm the only solid information she'd received. Glinda, in response, felt a small twinge of guilt for her repeated comment, but soon excused herself. She'd hardly been on the best of terms with Elphaba—that fiancé stealer—when she'd said it._

_Then she thought of Fiyero, likely dead all alone in that field, and made herself small, ashamed._

_"She's evil, Dorothy, and that's all you need to know," said the Tin Man heatedly, but then his face softened, coddling the girl's innocent ignorance. "You can't ask her—not for anything. Anything!" he stressed, and for a flash of a moment utter misery came over Dorothy's face. " She's evil, as evil as Galinda—as **Glinda**-- is good." Unexpectedly, tears came to his eyes at that, but he rallied himself once more. " Everyone knows that! She'll hurt you as soon as she sees you! Didn't she do this to me? And the Lion, look at him!" The Lion, startled, hid his face, effectively proving the Tin Man's point. "Why, if she did anything to you I'd…" He trailed off into tears again, just at the thought._

_Then he shook his axe._

"_You're right… that was silly for me to say." Dorothy nodded her head, accepting the words. "You've been here all this time, and…and I know what you're saying must be true, but…" She stared bleakly at the ground for a moment, gave the edge of her pinafore another tug before she looked up again, voice rising. "But I just don't think I can do it. I **know** I can't!" Guilt swallowed her face. "The house was all an accident."_

"_Maybe Elphaba can have an accident, too," muttered the Tin Man, but Glinda was sure Dorothy didn't hear him. Hearing Elphaba's name was an unexpected shock, coming from an outsider. Her real name had not been made widely known in the press, for reasons that Glinda did not want to let herself think about. A name gave humanity. It was easier to hate a title than a name. Why did this man of tin have such a personal vendetta against Elphaba? Why did his voice, at times, sound so vaguely familiar? Was that really her original name he had said, or merely a slip?_

_It was not the time for such ponderings. Glinda strained forward, seeking answers. What was it that Dorothy anguished over? What was it that she could not do? She feared to know, and yet she could not **not**__know._

"_The Munchkins thought I was some kind of—of witch, but I didn't have any control over what happened. I didn't mean for the house to fall on anyone! I've never even been able to wring the necks of the fryers for supper! Auntie Em always has to do it, or Zeke. How can I kill her, even if she is wicked? Even if it's the only way the Wizard will help me get home, I--"_

_If the Tin Man had swung his axe into Glinda, it could not have hit her harder, taken her breath more surely, hurt more than Dorothy's words. She reacted as if struck, gasping, clutching, falling back. _

_They'd been sent to kill Elphaba. The Wizard had ordered her death. Why—**how**? It could not have come to this! She knew that some of the Wizard's actions over the years weren't exactly… well, they weren't…there was the matter with the Animals, but…but this was Elphaba! It couldn't be true! Yes, she was a threat to his regime. She flew, she rescued Animals, she spread…well, the truth. She wrote the truth in the skies for all to see, though they did not believe. Still, neither of them had ever made an attempt on the other's life, though they well could have. What had changed, that the Wizard was so afraid of her? Were the reports true? Had Fiyero's torture pushed her over the edge?_

_The Lion was speaking now. "You'll be able to do it if she gets those horrible green hands on you."_

"_Oh, she's green?" asked Dorothy, still looking miserable. It did not seem to surprise her much. Why should it, really, in a land where horses changed from red to purple?_

"_Greener than sin," confirmed the Tin Man, though Dorothy did not appear to be listening much. At any rate, green was a very nice color, where she came from. Green meant springtime after a hard winter, or the first sign of the crops on which their livelihoods depended. _

_Defiance at once flew into the young woman's face, and for a startled moment Glinda saw Elphie, standing before the Wizard years before. "Why did he send us, anyway? If he's really so great and powerful, why can't he do it himself?"_

_No one had an answer for her, or if they did Glinda was not there to hear it. Heart pounding, she turned and tore through the brush, running as fast as her legs would carry her, running dead East. The companions, thinking the noise came from some retreating animal (or Animal, as it were,) peered into the tree cover for a few minutes, but she was long gone. She would go to the Emerald City and demand some answers. She could stop this before it went any father, before she lost the second person in the world that she loved above all others. She was Glinda the Good, most popular public figure in all of Oz! That must count for something. _

_She hadn't run since her schoolgirl days, but she ran, jewel-lined clothes catching on the brush, arms stinging from fingerlike, sharp branches. When she finally had to stop, when her lungs were burning and her heart felt as if it would burst from her chest, she realized that in her frantic state she'd forgotten all about simply conjuring up her bubble. _

_She'd also forgotten that Glinda the Good counted for nothing at all—not in the places of real power. The Wizard's chambers had been closed to her since Fiyero's capture, but she forced her way with a fierce determination she hadn't known she possessed. For the first few hours, Madame Morrible, a little surprised, treated her as she would a clinging child. She smiled as if Glinda's demanding anger was merely a toddler's tantrum. "You're not to worry your pretty little head," she said at first. "Go and take a nice warm bath—you look positively exhausterated." As Glinda persisted, Morrible became more and more her usual casually condescending self. "Go twirl your wand or something. Redecorate your suite. We know how upset you are about all of this unpleasantness, but it can't be helped, my dear. Go buy yourself a nice new tiara and throw yourself a parade, if that will get you out of my hair." As the hours went by and Glinda pushed, the Press Secretary loosed her most sinister nature. "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep to your place! You are on thin ice—thin ice!—Miss Galinda of the Upper Uplands!" _

_She was defeated. Fiyero must be lost, and her one hope was that Elphaba might not yet be. Elphaba was strong, and Elphaba was clever. The unwilling Dorothy and her three companions could not take her. Perhaps, even, if Elphie could just talk to the girl, see her as Glinda had seen her, she would forget her grudge and help her. She, much more so than the Wizard, would be able to send her home. It could still work out… it **could**._

_But that night, Elphaba sent her flying monkeys after Dorothy._

_A day later a mob, led by the Tin Man, came after Elphaba._

--------------------

Glinda's eyes, closed in remembrance and in her fight for control, opened again. Two tears escaped and leaked, but the flood was staunched.

"I saw the Wizard; he said he's found a way to take me home," Dorothy was saying, probably wanting to fill the awful silence. "He's taking me himself." She didn't sound as overjoyed as Glinda would have thought, and for good reason. He'd sent her off to kill a witch and despite his clever speeches to the group he'd had no intention of fulfilling their requests at all. He was exposed as the coward he was, hiding behind machinery and masks. These were truths that Glinda had blinded herself to until now, glided over, so that she could sleep at night. Even Fiyero, who had once prided himself on being shallow and careless, hadn't been able to do that, not completely.

"The balloon?" she asked, and her voice, if not back to its usual charming lightness, was at least neutral, though a little croaky from the wash of salt tears.

"Yes, that's right."

So that was it, she thought. That was the lie the Wizard was putting out to cover his sudden departure. _So be it._ What did it matter, so long as Elphaba's killer went away? If she weren't so concerned about a re-takeover plot, she would have Morrible thrown in as well. Let them all go away—but then she'd have to go, too. If everyone with Elphaba's blood on their hands, if even by association, piled into that balloon, it would be too heavy to lift. A balloon dripping with her blood—a ghastly image; a correct one. If she hadn't taken part in the lies, would things have turned out differently? If she hadn't been so angry over Fiyero… none of that mattered now, even though she'd had, she knew, every right to be upset over what had happened. _'He never belonged to you, he doesn't love you, and he never did! He loves me!'_ (Still, shouldn't she have seen? Shouldn't she have recognized his compliant indifference, figured out the reason why he, a wealthy royal, had chosen to become a working soldier? Wasn't it strange to her that the pleasure-loving prince of the "scandalacious reputation" had somehow never made it into her bed all those years, all because he didn't want to ruin the chance of what he really wanted? And Elphaba-- she had been as surprised as anyone when he'd gone with her). Even so, what did any of it matter, anymore? The ins and outs of their unintended love triangle seemed so petty when she remembered that the triangle only had one point now. The other two were dead. ('_There's a couple of things get lost.'_) Nessa was dead.

"Do you…" Dorothy was asking, "…do you think he can find Kansas?" Her words held no fear, even though she could very well have been committing sacrilege. She no longer knew who was on which side-- who was good, who was wicked. There was heat to her tone, though well hidden, and Glinda sensed it. Dorothy was disgusted with the Wizard's lies; she hadn't been so fooled as she'd appeared. Once again Glinda thought of Elphaba. Yes, she would have liked her.

She did not answer Dorothy's question at once, though she knew the truth. No, she doubted he could; she doubted it very much. A brief, satisfying image came to mind of that balloon floating away into nothingness, drifting endlessly until… no. That balloon would only be seating one. The Wizard would land somewhere, sometime, but she would not subject Dorothy to his incompetence, despite the lingering hot simmer in her heart. It would be an easy enough matter to get her out of the balloon somehow (_and that little dog, too_), to loosen the ropes too early. Sending the girl back to Kansas herself would be more difficult, but there had to be a way.

She could not say anything about this; she could not speak against the Wizard. Oz wouldn't stand for it, and she had to go on. For Elphie. _'For both of us.' _She'd promised Elphie. "Do just what they tell you, and don't worry," was all she said. "I'll take care of everything." Her voice changed to cool confidence, though with a contained tremor beneath. She had confronted the Wizard and Morrible with that voice, and then as now wondered where it had come from. Dorothy, however, did not look much assured, nor had she reason to. The Wizard was false. The Witch of the North had sent her to the Wizard. The Witch of the North was nothing like she had been.

That seemed to be the end of whatever conversation they would have, and Dorothy at last noticed the busy workings of Toto across the room. The terrier, having chewed up at least one lovely bouquet, had moved on to scratching at the scattered sheaf of papers that lay mingled among the petals.

"Oh, Toto, don't!" she cried, mortified, trying to swat the dog away from his prey. Embarrassed and ashamed, she began scooping up the ruined flowers with the other hand. (Funny how it was that she should feel such now, when she had never hesitated to let the same dog run loose in Miss Gulch's garden back home). Glinda's eyes were uncaring of her spilled possessions, but Dorothy felt them on her just the same. There was no trash bin that she could see, so she stuffed the smashed blossoms into her wicker basket before moving on to the papers. The least she could do, thought the industrious farm girl, was to help the Good Witch pick up her things, even though she'd had no part in putting them there.

From her second handful, a photograph dropped out. It was common enough to her, photographs, though this one was in true-to-life color rather than the rich sepia she'd always seen before. It wasn't old—the colors were still bright and untouched by fading—but it looked somehow…worn. Well-loved? There was an odd, sharp crease along one side, as if it had been stuck in the edge of a vanity mirror. In the bottom right margin was printed what Dorothy supposed must be a date, though the numbers made no sense to her. Months and years were recorded differently in Oz. In the left margin was a green, glittery logo that read 'The Emerald City' in overdone cursive writing. Most of the glitter was gone.

The tourist souvenir photograph should not have been remarkable-- yet when Dorothy saw it, the world of Oz turned upside down on her all over again.

She stared at the picture; two girls within it stared back. They weren't much older than she was—about the age of the high school girls she sometimes saw outside in the main yard. The one on the left, she realized at once, was a teenaged Glinda. The future Good Witch of the North looked nearly the same as now, for her beauty had faded even less than the photograph itself, but somehow _lighter_-- breezy and charming and coquettish. Her smile was different, so different, and Dorothy knew then that every smile she had seen from the Good Witch since she'd come to Oz was completely fake.

That realization was far from the biggest shock that little square of paper held. It couldn't be true, could it? The other girl, it wasn't _her_… but Dorothy knew that it was. No one else that Dorothy had ever seen-- even in Oz-- had green skin, and hers was as green as the shipped-in apples in their baskets at Dooley's Mercantile back home. There was the hat, and the long black dress— though not looking as menacing as they had been, with the witch towering above her in that high-up room, cape swirling. The surprise was not the skin but the smile, for it was a real smile—a flashing row of white teeth dazzling against the green—and youthful-happy, not the ominous curving of lips that Dorothy remembered from her nightmare ordeal. One hand jauntily doffed the curved brim of the pointed hat. One booted heel kicked up playfully from beneath the prim black skirts.

The two young witches were side by side, leaning in. It wasn't a stiffly posed studio photograph, like all the others that Dorothy had ever seen. They were close to one another because they wanted to be, and their arms were clasped around one another's waists… in friendship.

In an instant, Dorothy knew the truth. She forced her eyes away and up and into those of Glinda the Good.

"That's why," she said. "That's why, isn't it? Everyone's cheering… but you were her friend."

And then she repeated it, as if it defied every law of the universe, because in the universe of Oz, it did. "You were her friend."

More to come…


	3. Nightmare Revisited

Actually Important Author's Notes: 

First of all, I apologize for the long wait. Real life and all. Also, this chapter--which was originally a good 24 pages long-- has been re-tooled, broken into other chapters, hacked, edited, you name it. My special thanks goes out to Valieara for her wonderful help in this process. As a thank-you, the character of Glenna is dedicated to her. This does not mean much yet, but hopefully it will in the future. This chapter is where the real meat-and-potatoes of the story begins, and where we will meet Dorothy's "enemy."

For those of you who are not as familiar with the Wizard of Oz film, this next part is for you. In the movie, Dorothy's experience in Oz is a dream that parallels her real life. (This is unlike any other version of the story, in which her trip to Oz is always real.) Therefore, the people whom she knows in Kansas show up as Ozian characters who are played by the same actor in the film. While I'm not using the dream concept, I am using the idea of parallel characters. They are not supposed to be the exact same person in two different 'universes,' but instead are two separate individuals who have many similar experiences and traits. If this fic were a movie, they would still be played by the same actor. Here are the parallels from the film:

The Wicked Witch of the West: Miss Almira Gulch

The Scarecrow: Hunk, a farmhand

The Tin Man: Hickory, a farmhand

The Lion: Zeke, a farmhand

The Wizard: Professor Marvel

Uncle Henry and Aunt Em do not have Ozian equivalents, though in a stage version of story Aunt Em shows up as Glinda. This does not work well in terms of Wicked, so I made up my own. You won't hear much about her for awhile (or even much in this story,) but here she is for sake of all-inclusion:

Glinda: Glenna Chunley, formerly of Upland, Kansas (OC)

The only other thing I need mention is that there are some actual lines from the movie in this chapter. I take no credit for them.

Chapter 3: Nightmare Revisited

Glinda had known there would be tests like this. She had just not expected one to come so _soon_.

_'Not now. Oh, please, not now. Not yet.'_

For one of the very few times in her life, she had no idea what to say. She had always been so good with words. Now there was a lack of words and too many words, maybe the wrong ones. Her impulses battled for dominance. A full half of her wanted to scream out the whole truth not only to Dorothy but to the entire world beyond her window, scream it until her voice was raw and ugly. Either she would find her revenge on Oz's guilty citizens or they would find their revenge on her, for not being the perfect princess they believed she was. (_That she'd made them believe she was—ah, that made a difference, didn't it?_) Those who had wanted Elphaba dead would not understand. They would not understand that it was she who had brought forth the better part of any true goodness their precious Witch of the North had ever had.

"_They'll only turn against you!"_

_"I don't care!"_

And she hadn't. Didn't? Oh, what brave and foolish things one said when caught up in a moment! For all her charged and grandiose visions of defiantly following her friend in death-- could she, really? _('Who's having the delusions of grandeur, now, Glinda?') _She would have stood between Elphaba and the witch hunters without hesitation if Elphie hadn't made her hide… but it was too late for that. How unexpected it was that to look at the two women—Glinda in her finery and frippery, Elphaba in her plain homespun—one would never know that it was Glinda who had always been the more practical of the two. Elphaba'd had her grand ideals and fighting spirit, but Glinda knew how the world worked. It was better to be a live dog than a dead lion, so the expression went, and it was true enough. The coward died a thousand deaths, the brave only once… and that was true too, wasn't it? She had proof enough of it. Glinda was certain she was dying her deaths now, a little death every day—for always?

For the other half of her wanted to deny it; the other half of her feared the darkened faces and dangerous murmuring of the mob. Who would not? _(Even Elphaba? Was she afraid, at the end?)_ The half-lies came easily enough to her mind, though she hated the very thought of them.

'_It all depends what you mean by friend…' _

'_It was a long time ago…' _

'_I was very young then; we were both very young…'_

If she flung the truth in the face of Oz, it would be the end of her. Death—or at the very least banishment-- would follow her great catharsis. She was no good to Elphaba dead—though she was not certain she would be any good to her alive, either. What did she know about fighting for the oppressed of Oz? She could not read two words of the Grimmerie; the text swirled and blurred hopelessly whenever she so much as opened to a page. But she had promised nonetheless, and she liked to think too that it was not _all_ about The Cause. She liked to think that Elphaba wanted to protect her simply because she had loved her, despite everything. She believed that-- amid brief, hurtful thoughts that she did not know which Elphaba had loved _more._ _(Galinda Upland, daughter of privilege, jealous of the poor and disenfranchised of Oz. How strange, truly, the world is.)_

A few screamed sentences and her vows to Elphaba would be shattered before a full week had come and gone. Whatever help she might have offered would be snuffed out, and there was precious little of it left for those in need. Could it… could it be that telling the truth now would be the most completely selfish thing she would ever do? Lies would be the only way she could go on, until the day, someday perhaps, when it would be safe to end them. Elphie had told her keep up the lie, and Elphaba had been the bravest and noblest person Glinda had ever known.

Was she practical or merely a coward? Noble or simply bending the circumstances to justify her own weakness? Was that all Elphaba had been doing with her extracted promises—making allowance for a friend's weakness?

Glinda's two sides warred, but in the end they made a meeting. She had sworn that she would not clear Elphaba's name… and though it might rip out her heart to hold her tongue, she would not break her word in that. Dorothy, though, was a problem. She had already seen the photograph, and Glinda's tears made lies of anything she could possibly say. It was far too late to put on her public face and smile her way out of it. She was an unusually perceptive girl, Dorothy, staring at her with those maddeningly earnest eyes. _"You were her friend" _– it wasn't a question, but a statement. But did it matter? The friendship had hardly been a secret to their classmates at Shiz, though the difference was that they must believe it long recanted. Dorothy knew better. But she was leaving, wasn't she, and soon? Even were she not—if Glinda could not find a way—surely the people would still believe their beloved Good Witch over the word of such a recent heroine… if it came to that. If it came to that. Besides, Glinda still longed to _talk_, and on one horribly wrong level, Dorothy could be the only person she would ever be able to tell.

Or maybe it was just that some ugly part of her still wanted to punish that wretched girl.

"She was my _best_ friend, the only friend that mattered," she breathed out at long last, stays loosening. The words hung heavy in the air.

Dorothy looked at her evenly for a moment-- not judging, not understanding. "Even though she was the Wicked Witch?"

"_Elphaba_," Glinda jerked and snapped, the word coming out harsher than she had intended—if she had intended at all. Hurt and surprise flickered in Dorothy's features, stung by that voice that had before been sugary as syrup, by the face that had always been sweet and placid. "She had a name and it was Elphaba. Elphaba Thropp. After Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall, of all the ironic, silly, horrible things." Glinda produced from somewhere a delicate handkerchief, and began jabbing away at her escaping tears in such a non-delicate way that the girl was worried for her again, for a moment.

'_Elphaba,'_ thought Dorothy, _'Elphaba.'_ The sound of it was otherworldly to her foreign ear, though it seemed to her somehow that it would belong to a witch, for all its saintly derivation. It wasn't really important. What was important was that the Witch had had a name, any name at all. The Witch she had killed had a name—a strange new concept. In the stories she had read, and before that, had read _to_ her, the villains did not have names. Was that to make it easier, she thought, to want them to die at the end? To make them not real people, somehow? They were only caricatures; they were absolute Evil to some named hero's absolute Good. Just 'The Witch,' the 'Evil Queen,' the 'Wicked Stepmother,' the 'Old Hag,' the 'Sea Witch,' the 'Bad Fairy,' the 'Wicked Witch.' _'The Wicked Witch of the West.'_ What did that mean? The stories never told how they became wicked—or more wicked than any other person. Surely they did not all start out that way… or had they, with the seeds of wickedness lying in wait from the very beginning? One could never picture them as babies, as some mother's child, as little girls who probably did all the usual little girl things that Dorothy herself had not so long ago set aside.

She'd never known anyone truly wicked before in her small Kansas town—not on such a grand fairy-story scale. There was old Mrs. Crockett, who was merely grumpy and cross (on account of her constant aches and pains, she said,) and Farmer Rawlings, who was always gruff and mumbling. There was Mr. Amos, the town drunkard, given to staggering and bawling out obscenities on the street corners—but while not the community's most admired citizen, the worst he ever did was offend the delicate sensibilities of the town's few delicate ladies. There were cruel class bullies and backbiting neighbors with their vicious gossip. (Was that not wicked, in a somehow accepted way?)

And then there was Miss Gulch, horrible Miss Gulch, wicked as any witch-- but Dorothy could not say that she _knew_ her. No one did. There was a story about her, set long before Dorothy had been born, when Miss Gulch was a very young woman—a story supposedly so awful and violent that even the worst of the small town gossips, meeting every morning for their slander and coffee, left it alone. It had died so long ago that no one was even sure if it was true anymore, as if the town itself had pushed it back and away out of memory (for shame?) What was left was distorted with facts twisted. Dorothy had heard whispers about it when she was six or seven: tales of a younger sister and father dead, of a secret love—a young black man who worked for hire at a local farm-- and then his lynching by a gang of the town's men when the love was a secret no longer. There was the town darling, one Miss Glenn… Glenna?…formerly from Upland1, mixed up in it all but long since fled to marry money (some said) and wash her hands of the whole ugly and sordid thing. What the people were all to eager to remember was that Miss Gulch had not the common decency to leave the town that had never wanted her anyway, even before. Instead she took against it. Her weapon was the wealth that, being the only relative left alive, she had inherited from her father, the hard-nosed and hated banker whose ruthlessness she had once spoken against. After that she'd embraced it, doubled it. He'd owned half the town; in five years she owned half the county. Every farm she claimed, every mortgage she foreclosed, every plea she refused to hear, every property she took over—with every one, the town hated her the more. Now Miss Gulch was little more than a caricature (_"you wicked old witch!"_); children threw eggs on her veranda as a dare and ran off screaming about being hexed. Dorothy hadn't known her first name—Almira, it was—until her Aunt Em had said it on the fateful day of the tornado.

Almira. Elphaba. "The other witch—the first one…"

"Nessarose," Glinda supplied, sorrow in her voice. Dorothy thought of the Munchkins singing, of Glinda's plastered smile. "Nessa. Elphaba's baby sister. She was devoted to her."

In Dorothy's mind, the names swirled together. Miss Gulch was a title that children scared one another with, but Almira was a woman with a terrible history. The Wicked Witch of the West was Elphaba, with a friend named Glinda and a sister named Nessarose. She had once visited the Emerald City and looked into a camera, full of happiness. What had been her history? Dorothy did not know.

Of course, Dorothy and the Witch had a history all their own.

--------------------

_The Witch of the West was everything the Tin Man had said she would be. She was everything **everyone** had said she would be. _

_In one way she had proved contradictory to her reputation for malice. Dorothy had expected to be killed immediately, or else disfigured beyond repair by some evil curse, when the flying monkeys had set her down before the Witch in the castle courtyard. Instead, she'd been locked away in a tower after her first refusal to surrender the shoes, and, between intermittent demands and threats, had been left mostly to herself. She was very much alive and very much afraid. Fear was her only companion in the circular cell. The room was strange with disuse: still air, damp-cold floor, chilled blocks of stone around and below. There was no **scent** besides the cold. There was no sound inside the thick walls and heavy bolted door, but for the times when fear rose up and the void overtook her and her heart hammered—a rapid audible thudding over the rush of blood pounding in her ears. Outside the window were jagged grey mountains and black, silent, empty sky; far, far below lay a silver ribbon of river. There was no one to hear her cries for help, and she did not cry them. Her screams would only echo, swallowed up in the dark._

_'**If happy little bluebirds fly…'**_

_Toto was gone, escaped into the woods. Her last little bit of comfort, her last little part of home-- torn away. She longed more than ever to have him to hold onto. She wanted Aunt Em there to hold onto **her**. Aunt Em had never been an affectionate woman, but still Dorothy saw made-up pictures of herself, younger, wrapped up safe against her aunt's farm apron, weather-toughened arms circling tight. She wanted her Uncle Henry, imagining him much taller and braver than he had been the day she left, giving Toto over to Miss Gulch without any fight at all. Now another witch was here and there was no help anywhere. Never had she felt so helpless, not even when the monkeys had carried her over the black yawning stretches of nothing, her feet kicking into miles of emptiness. She hadn't even been able to hold on—not even that. _

'**_Why oh why can't I?'_**

_Dorothy huddled in a single carved chair, pulling her skirt down over the glittering red shoes, now hateful, that had been the cause of her captivity. The only other pieces of furniture were an oversized hourglass and a low table near the door, onto which one of the monkeys had tossed a chalice and a plate of bread and cheese. Dorothy did not know how long ago that had been. Fear could slow or speed time, and she had no way of knowing which. No matter-- the food and drink lay untouched. She could not imagine being able to push food down her throat, let alone keep it down. That was for the best; it could be poison, couldn't it? She could think of no other reason that the Witch would feed her, unless it were to keep her alive for some future torment. The fear that she struggled to keep from twisting her face was twisting at her stomach instead, turning her insides into a painful, cramping knot. She could not eat, nor could she lie down in the pile of blankets that had been provided for a bed. Her only comfort was vigilance. If she slept, she could wake to a nightmare. She could wake to one of the grotesque monkeys bending over her. She could wake to the Witch. At least if she stayed awake she could see the nightmare coming. The terror would come either way, but it would be so much worse, she thought, if it came as a surprise._

_She could not eat and she could not sleep, but before an estimated hour had passed she knew that she could also not just go on waiting, singing pathetic snatches of songs to calm herself. She had to walk, to move—anything would be better than sitting and shivering away in her crypt of a room. Was that a tiny crack in the wooden door, there? She made herself unfold and go closer to see— yes, it was! Immediately she set upon it with one fingernail, scratching at it to widen it out. Painful splinters lodged in her fingertips, but she worked on with scarcely any notice. When at last she finished she pressed one eye against the gap. Even to have the smallest window outside of this sealed-up tomb-- to be able to hear what was coming, no matter how bad! When the Witch returned Dorothy wanted to see her, so she would not have to be afraid for her coming. She would see her rounding the stairs— only her shadow at first, growing larger and larger, then the tip of the tall hat, and then…_

…_Dorothy pulled back, stifling a gasp. The Witch was already in the larger room next to her own. She was not twenty feet away. Dorothy felt her skin crawl, head to toe. Still, she forced herself to take another look. Curiosity filled her. The Witch looked… not quite… right. Any witch that Dorothy had ever read about seemed to spend her time reveling in her own wickedness, cackling and dancing around a cauldron or crystal ball with fiendish glee. Before, the Witch of the West had borne this out; she was all wicked confidence. Now, though, when she thought she was alone, she looked anything but happy. There was no cauldron to speak of, but there was a large viewing globe; she was hunched over it, green fingers splayed out on the curves of glass. From her lips came a single word—Dorothy could only suppose it was a magic word to a hex of some kind—and her voice was so intensely focused it sounded as if it would bore through the glass. Three times she said it, trying to make the crystal do her bidding._

"_Fiyero, Fiyero, **Fiyero**…"_

_The globe did not yield up what she wanted. All at once she flung back her hands and began to pace raggedly. She was determined, but with no direction to send her determination in. In her pacing, her keen eyes fell on the flicker of light coming from the sliver of scratched-out door. She paused. She turned. Dorothy's heart stopped beating for a long moment as the Witch stared black-eyed at the door. One second. Two seconds. Three—and then her pacing became an angry stride. Dorothy went scrambling back—back towards the meager safety of the high-backed chair. No—there she would be cornered… there was nowhere to go. She was trapped like a rat, and there was the Witch…_

_The door was flung open against the wall, sent flying by a mere pass of the Witch's arm. Wood splinters shattered into a sharp, dangerous spray. Through it the Witch stalked forward, hunched and rasping. _

"_Afraid of me are you, my little pretty?" she growled angrily, raking at the air with one claw-curved hand. Dorothy, though the Witch had never so much as laid a finger on her, braced herself to be struck. The blow didn't come. Despite it, the Witch's face had grown more furiously clouded, and her voice scraped. "Well, you should be-- spying on me like that! Your Auntie Em should have taught you some manners!"_

_Dorothy had no answer for that, only to say the same words she had been repeating since first she saw the Witch of the West. "Let me go," she said, holding back the shakiness in her tone. Frightened though she was, she knew she must not plead. She must not show weakness. Zeke, back home, had taught her that, when the worst of her adversaries was rich, snobbish Emma Pearson, the doctor's daughter and bane of Dorothy's young existence. "Why won't you let me go?"_

_The Witch lunged towards her, closer than she had been yet, and loomed. She was uncomfortably near and uncomfortably tall even for Dorothy, who was considered well grown for her age. At close range, it was clear that she was not only tall but also uncommonly thin, with long limbs and with cheekbones sharp enough to mirror the cut-glass mountains beyond the window. The place under her ribs was visibly hollowed out even under her thick black dress—didn't she ever take nourishment, like a normal person? Well, she wasn't normal, Dorothy corrected herself, was she? Or did she just not have much to… no, that couldn't be right. Surely the Witch wasn't poor; Dorothy had never thought of someone wicked being anything but rich. Miss Gulch certainly was, and Emma, and every other person who had ever looked down their noses at her family. Wasn't it the love of money that was the root of all evil? Still, Dorothy could see no other reason why the edges of the Witch's sleeves were so ragged, and why her dress wasn't made all of one piece. Her pointed hat, though worse for wear, was of fine, glossy velvet, but her dress was sewn together in patchwork, like Uncle Henry's over-darned socks back on the homestead. Green skin was visible at the elbows where the cloth had worn through and at the shoulder seam, where the material had split. Dorothy's hardworking family had never been wealthy—no, quite the opposite—but no matter how they had been forced to scrimp by in years of scanty harvests, she had never had to wear clothing so patched and threadbare as that. It wasn't slovenliness, for the dress was laundered but for a rim of floor dust around the lower edge. It was **poverty**. Even the castle did not really belong to the Witch; that had been clear from her scowling confusion in the corridors following Dorothy's arrival. She'd heard from a rancher in Munchkinland that the Witch was in league with some terrible creatures called Rebel Animals who gave her food and shelter. Evidently, terrible or not, the Rebel Animals did not have much to give._

_All in all, the Witch did not look healthy, either. There were dark circles under each of her eyes from a long lack of sleep—and she had two eyes, not one or three as many of the townspeople on their journey had reported. Dorothy wondered if any of them had actually seen the Witch, after all. By the way they talked, if they had they would not have lived to tell about it-- at least not without coming away horribly scathed or hexed._

_She tried to study the details to keep herself from being overwhelmed by the whole, but she knew it was no use. The Witch knew she was afraid, and the Witch looked also like she was accustomed to making people so. Just like the room itself she had no scent coming off her—no, not a scent but a wave of almost malevolent force, something that Dorothy could not name. There was heat. Her breath was fiery hot and dry, like fever, like the brick oven in the farmyard. It would not have been a surprise had she suddenly breathed a mass of fire, in the same way she could draw it from her hands. Was she really part dragon, the way some of the people had said? Dorothy didn't doubt it, and yet…_

…_yet why was it that she was less afraid of the Witch now, when she could see her, than she was when she was simply a voice in the next room?_

"_That's a fine sentiment," hissed the Witch into her face, "coming from a girl who dropped a house on my sister and now comes to kill me, too!" Dorothy twisted her handkerchief, nearly wringing it apart at the threads. She felt fixed, pinned. She thought of the butterflies she'd seen at a small museum once, dead and stuck open on rows of white paper. The Witch's stare was long and hard. "You're braver than I thought you'd be, working for **him**," she continued after a long observation, her voice biting with scorn. "So he's sending a little girl to do his dirty work now? But it works out well for you, too, doesn't it? One day a simple farm girl, the next day a national heroine, is that it?" The words gave up scorn and became a force of pure, focused spite. At last, then, Dorothy's face showed doubt. Was it the harsh words that made her flinch, or her own misgivings? No, she must not show it, she had to keep on… "Well, I'll give you a warning if you'll take it," the Witch continued. She poked one of her long, curved index fingers in emphasis, a mere inch from Dorothy's eyes. "Watch your back. One misstep and you'll be in the same place I am." Her finger jabbed again, more emphatically. "No good deed goes unpunished, my pretty. Wait until the crowds turn on **you** and see how you like it!" _

_The Witch's eyes flew open wide for the barest moment, and there was the startling flash of bright white on soft green. She'd said too much, and her head jerked so suddenly over her shoulder that it looked painful. When her face turned back the pain was gone, replaced by an odd, fierce sort of… expectancy?_

_Dorothy could only repeat herself, though she felt that the Witch was listening. "I've told you, I didn't mean to kill your sister, it was an accident!" She nearly winced at the sound of her own words, loud in the chamber. On the defensive, she sounded so patronizing, so righteously indignant. She'd thought on the road that she would apologize (though it was the perfect truth that she'd had no control over her falling house) until the Tin Man had warned her that she must not ask for anything—not even forgiveness. No sooner had she met the Witch then she realized that he was right, in the same way that Zeke and even, by example, her Aunt Em had been right. An apology required soft feelings, and soft feelings had no place with those who would hurt you. _

_In spite of herself, though, they began to seep through, wearing at the edges of her desperate attempts at bravery. It was something in the Witch's voice that had done it, or the something in her sparking eyes that might have been terrible pain. **'My sister…'** It was the Witch's sister who was dead—her sister. Dorothy herself had no siblings but had buried two parents; she knew well enough of the deep sorrow that came from family death, and yes—the deep anger, too. But didn't wickedness cancel out blood-bonds, didn't it cancel out grief? She floundered as helplessness washed over her. "I don't want to kill you! I just came because… because there was nothing else for me to do. I can't—I can't explain it, I can't even try. The Wizard told me I had to come, or he wouldn't send me home."_

_The Witch's stare, impossibly, grew sharper still. "You think he can?" she demanded._

"_Glinda said…"_

"_Glinda-- ha!" There was a strange explosion of mocking almost-laughter. "Glinda couldn't count to ten if you showed her her first nine fingers!" _

_If Dorothy didn't know any better, she would have said that the Witch looked a little sorry for that. She stopped talking for an endlessly long moment, pressing her fist against her mouth. When her fingers uncurled and at last she spoke again, her voice had left off all traces of its high, hag-like strangeness. No longer did she sound like the fairytale witch that Dorothy had always imagined from her books. In its place was a tone low and powerful, driving and intense.__2_

"_Suppose I believe you," she said._

"_It's true!" cried Dorothy before she had even absorbed the words enough to be properly taken aback. She did then, and was, mouth dropping open.  
_

"_Prove it," challenged the Witch. "I was even more taken with the Wizard than you are when I was your age. I learned different," she added with a bitter smile. "Let's see if you can learn, too. If you mean what you say, then prove it by never having anything to do with the Wizard again."_

_Dorothy thought of the looming golden face, the loud and condescending voice, the pluming smoke. No, that would not be a difficult promise to keep, if only… "But then how will I…?"_

"_I can make deals as well as he can. You hand over my shoes, and I'll send you home—you and your little dog, too. Don't think I can't do it," she added, gesturing near her face with one hand. "You have my word you won't be harmed."_

"_Oh, but you've hurt me already!"_

"_How? Have I scared you so badly as that?" snapped the Witch, scathingly sarcastic. "Did my monkeys frighten you? I've given you a place to sleep and food to eat—which I see you've wasted."_

_Dorothy's boldness rose at the slight. "You kidnapped me!"_

"_Kidnapped! Is that what you call detaining an assassin where you come from?"_

"_I hadn't thought of it that way," said Dorothy, admitting nothing. She was no assassin._

**_Was she?_**

"_That's the problem with you and half of Oz—you don't **think**." Suddenly the Witch looked very tired-- too tired to continue her rant. She sighed heavily. "I just want you gone. I don't want to look at your face anymore! Give me my shoes, so you can go." Again her voice deepened, dropped, and broke. Her dark eyes met Dorothy's, not squinted meanly, but open. Her face was open, too. At that instant, a lock of her hair fell loose from it strict knot and tumbled, soft and shiny, almost to her waist. Another followed, then another, then a whole raven-colored wave. The effect was immediate and striking. The Witch of the West at once looked very… **young. 'Why, she isn't much** **older than my schoolteacher back home,**' thought Dorothy, in revelation. **'But witches are old and ugly. Aren't they?' **_

_Her lip wasn't really trembling, was it?_

_Dorothy felt herself moving towards something, but towards **what**? There was a fluttering inside, an urge to speak. What was it that she would say? _

_Why was it that she wanted to reach out: in sympathy, in empathy, in apology, in anything?_

_Her fingers stretched, her hand raised, her lips tried to find words. _

_And then, as quickly as it had come, the fluttering flew away. _

_Shock and self-disgust followed in its wake. Dorothy thought of the Tin Man and the Lion and was ashamed. Of the Scarecrow, too—she'd been so ready to throw them all off, to take what she could get. She remembered every potent word she had ever heard spoken of the Witch. To think she had almost been deceived! They'd warned her—they'd all warned her, down to the smallest Munchkin—of the cunning of the Witch of the West. Of her lies—all lies! She was a master of deception; it was her most devastating power. This was only a trick. Threats had not worked, so the Witch had tried to appeal to her sense of pity. That was all. _

_Her voice sprang forth, not to accept but to accuse. The hand that had almost taken the Witch's in her own clenched into a fist. "No! I don't believe you, you're wicked!" She took two quick, large steps backward for good measure, pulling away from the Witch as if she were a dead thing._

_For the space of a few seconds the Witch looked startled into an expression that Dorothy could not place. Then, all softness was gone. "Yes, I am! **I am!** But look at yourself while you're at it. You'll murder me to get home, but to give back a sister's remembrance—that's too much to ask!" she fired out, words spurting acid._

"_I'm not supposed to give you the shoes! I can't anyway, they won't come off!"_

"_They'd come off if you wanted them to. I suppose you think they're magic shoes, and I'll use them to take over all of Oz?" the Witch sneered, making her voice into a higher parody of Dorothy's girlish tone. "Why would I want it! All my life I try to help, and—" She stopped short, closing her eyes and letting out a hard, wincing breath. "The Wizard can have it! They deserve each other." _

"_The Tin Man said if you had the shoes you'd—"_

"_He would know!" she cried, eyes darting. "Poor fool, now we're both heartless." Her eyes rested on something Dorothy could not see. She wondered if the Witch was speaking to her at all. "Poor Boq. Does he wish I hadn't saved his life at all? He'd rather blame me than Nessa, after everything she—that's something—that's better. No, that's better. At least I did something for-- And the Lion blames me, too, now? He'd be happier in that cage, than to have known me? And Fiyero…" Her almost frantic glare found Dorothy again, and for a moment she looked startled, as if she were seeing her for the first time in a long while. Caught up in the funnel of her own fury, she'd seemed to have forgotten she was not alone. Her arms darted forward, as if of their own accord, and her grasping fingers closed around each of Dorothy's arms, sinking in. A yelp of pain shot through the tiny room. "You're right to refuse my help!" _

"_You're hurting me, stop!" Dorothy cried._

_And the Witch did, at once._

_She released Dorothy from her grip, dropping her so abruptly that she fell backward to the stone floor. The Witch whirled around, sending her cape edge whistling through the air. It caught Dorothy in the eyes, bringing a well of stinging tears. When they cleared, the Witch stood with her back to her. Dorothy could not see her face, but she could see her fingers, curled under, hands held out. There was red under the fingernails. The Witch stalked forward, then halted, again looking down at the glittering bloody crescents._

"_Why don't you just kill me, if you're going to do it!" Dorothy shouted desperately at her back. "I can't give you the shoes!"_

_The Witch's shoulders rose and fell as her breathing slowed. Her voice reverted, becoming once again twisted and cruel. "I won't hurt you right away. I'll let you think about it a little first." She hoisted up the large hourglass, shaking it in Dorothy's direction before turning it and plunking it down hard on the table. The red sand within it jumped, and then began seeping quickly to the lower chamber. The plate and chalice, displaced, fell crashing to the floor. Spilled water ran along the grey stones. "You see that! That's how much longer you've got to be alive. And it isn't long, my little pretty, it isn't long. I can't wait forever for those shoes!"_

_With this latest and most terrible threat biting the air, the Witch flung herself towards the open doorway. "You won't do it, will you?" Dorothy cried after her. " You won't just do it yourself! You're just like the Wizard!"_

"_I'm nothing like him!" barked the Witch. "And you don't know how lucky you are that I'm not!"_

_There was an explosion of red smoke, and a pillar of fire._

_And then, the Witch was gone._

--------------------

Dorothy Gale had only wanted one thing since she had been dropped into the Land of Oz, and her want was simple. She wanted to go home. She'd wanted it with a single-minded determination that had taken her down a long road of yellow bricks, through terrain she had not imagined, into a city of emeralds unlike anything she had ever seen. She had formed alliances, faced a Wizard, and killed a Witch. Clearly, her desire was great.

Her homecoming was still not certain, and yet now the determination that had moved her so far and so fast was trained in a different direction. Again, her want was simple. Dorothy wanted the truth. It did not seem so much to ask, really—the truth—but it dangled before her as an elusive a goal as far-off Kansas. Everything had seemed so simple in Oz at first, so black and white. Glinda was Good, the Wizard was Good, and the Witch was Wicked. That she had learned before she had even been in Oz a full hour. Only now, with the photograph, wet with Glinda's tears, before her; the Wizard's lies fresh in her memory; and a more honest recollection of her time with the Witch in her mind, those would-be facts were fast unraveling.

It had been Glinda's confession that had started it, opened the floodgates of possibility. It was easier to think clearly, too, away from danger. It was easier to think about what the Witch might have been when she was not there. Dorothy began with the one thing she knew for certain. The Wizard was a liar. It was difficult to think of him as wicked, but he was a liar. There was no denying it; she knew better than anyone. _("You're a very bad man.") _The people hated the Witch of the West because she lied about the Wizard—only they had proved themselves not lies. Did that mean the Witch had spoken the truth? Was that why she had been sent to kill her? To stop the _truth?_

Dorothy shuddered, deep inside. A blast of cold fear echoed in her stomach. Perhaps she did not want the truth after all. It was not easy to be the one who had killed the Wicked Witch of the West, even when she had been more sure of that wickedness. What if it turned out unbearable to be the one who had killed Elphaba Thropp?

Wanted or no, more recollections forced themselves to the forefront.

--------------------

_"Stand back, Miss Dorothy," came the deep voice of the Gale Forcer to Dorothy's ear, accompanied by a gloved guiding hand on her shoulder. Around him, his fellow soldiers fanned out in formation, creating a protective barrier against what could soon be a mob scene of citizens wanting to parade in the victorious Witch Slayers. Here, in the outskirts of the Emerald City, there was nothing of the sort—only empty squalor. The glowing and glorious town of green was ringed with dingy grey slums. Dorothy noticed how the soldiers tried valiantly to keep her attention occupied elsewhere than the depressing and shameful streets. Their efforts were in vain._

_"There are Rebels here," a second guard warned her, holding up a hand. " Animals. Stay back."_

_Dorothy obeyed, wary of a sudden pouncing Tiger or Bear. She'd heard of the Rebels—vicious creatures bent on taking the places of humans. They used up too many resources, many had told her, though Dorothy was not certain what that meant. She was sure they must be man-eaters, at least, and was thankful for the moving blockade of soldiers. _

"_There it is," mumbled the first soldier, and Dorothy turned to look. It was small Antelope: bone-thin, wide-eyed, and shivering in rags. Dorothy had never seen an animal wear clothing before, though the scraps of material scarcely covered its middle. Clear shame was evident in its swimming eyes and dipping head. A small tin cup was pressed between its front hooves—a trick it had been trained to do, she thought. At the sight of the crowds and soldiers it seemed to wilt further still, dropping chin to chest._

"_Oh, no," said Dorothy, breaking away from her escort. "This can't be right. This isn't a Rebel at all," she added earnestly, convinced beyond doubt that it was all some kind of mistake._

_A looked passed between the soldiers, and Dorothy knew they were humouring her. She had not received much humouring from the adults back at the farm (just as well, for she did not like it,) but she knew it for what it was. They began to talk amongst themselves._

"…_scout heard this one talking when he came through to check the route. It's an Animal, all right."_

"_Rebel?"_

"_Aren't they all?"_

"_Should we take it in?"_

"_Look at it. Southstairs or here, what's it matter? We didn't bring a cage with us, anyway."_

"_We'll keep an eye on it."_

_Dorothy gave their conversation only half an ear as she moved forward to kneel beside the suffering Animal. "I don't have any money," she told it, in the same sincere, conversational way she spoke to Toto. She didn't expect it to understand any more than Toto did, but that didn't matter. Often, she'd found, Toto was the only one around who would listen to her, and she'd as soon like to talk to him as to most people she knew. The Lion understood her speech as well as any human would, but she had long since supposed him to be if not a one-of-a-kind, magicked animal, at least a very rare one. She opened her wicker basket and nudged aside the oilcan, dug beneath the Munchkinland bouquet. Her fingers lingered on the round, be-ribboned lollipop, then pushed it aside as frivolous. She drew out dark loaf of bread. A peasant family had given it to her only that morning. The fragrant, hearty farm bread reminded her of home, and she'd welled up a little when it was handed to her. "But please take this." _

_The Antelope blinked up at the soldiers and would not move. Dorothy could see the hunger in its eyes. Its mouth was watering for the bread, and yet it would not take it. Finally she placed the loaf atop the tin cup, which she could not help but notice was pitifully empty. Gratitude washed over the Antelope's face. There, as Dorothy leaned over it and blocked it from view, its lips… moved._

"_Thank you," it said in a whisper. _

_It should not have been such a surprise in a land that had already produced fighting trees and flying monkeys and at least one other speaking Animal, but Dorothy's hand came to her mouth in shock just as she felt the soldier's hand—heavier now—fall to her shoulder again. Evidently, the Gale Forcers had decided enough was enough._

"_We have to help him!" Dorothy urged, changing the pronoun without conscious decision. "That bread won't last very long."_

_The soldier's expression had changed. He was not humoring her now. _

"_You're not from here; you don't know better," he said. _

_Dorothy spent the next long mile of the walk hearing why any Animal did not deserve her pity._

_At the end of the mile, she was almost sure that they did._

--------------------

The Witch—_Elphaba_-- would have helped that Antelope, if the stories were true-- the Antelope and other thinking, talking, feeling Animals like him. It was probably true that some Animals plotted against the Wizard as the Gale Forcers had told her, but with all she knew now Dorothy could understand why they did. It was a just cause. How could a wicked witch fight for such a cause? How could Dorothy reconcile the picture of a caring woman with the one of her tormentor in the castle?

The Witch did not shed her skin. She did not have one eye. She had not hexed Dorothy, not even to get the shoes. As the perceived killer of her own sister, in her mind Dorothy would have deserved it more than anyone. _(Surely more than a helpless Lion cub, or an innocent Munchkin…)_

She had once been a young girl with a smile for the future. She had once been a beloved friend.

She still was, if only in the memory of the mourning Good Witch.

And yet how… how was she to believe the Witch over her own dear companions? How was she to heed the words of she who had locked her in a tower over those who had come to her rescue? She owed them so much, and it felt traitorous to admit that their stories were starting to look shaky, in light of all she had learned since. No doubt they believed them. The Lion didn't have a clear recollection of his own experience, really—just hazy images of classrooms and cages. Was it possible that the Witch had not put him in but taken him out? The Tin Man—well, there was no question that she'd turned him into tin. Even she admitted that. But _why_? To save him, as she'd said? Or was that a lie; was it all lies, straight to the end?

There was only one person, Dorothy thought, who would know. The only person who would know the truth about the Wicked Witch of the West was the woman who had been her best friend. _Glinda._ She was not at all sure that she trusted her, though to admit it hurt her heart. It was painful to see a perfect heroine brought low, and all the more painful for the memory of Glinda's sweet care of her when she'd first arrived in Oz. Glinda had sent her to the Wizard that day, forming the base of Dorothy's lost trust. Perhaps she hadn't known what he was. Perhaps she had. Either way she knew now, and with her friend dead Dorothy reasoned she must now be against him. That had to be enough. With the Scarecrow gone and her thoughts on the Lion and Tin Man thrown into utter confusion, Dorothy truly had no one else.

"Glinda?" she asked, surprising the both of them with the familiar title. An hour before, she would never have done it. The Good Witch of the North had been too high for anything but one of her grand titles. The tears had humanized her.

"What is it?"

"Would you tell me something? I want to know… I want to know about her. I want to know about Elphaba."

1 There is an Upland, Kansas. I used to know people from there.

2 This is both a nod to Margaret Hamilton and also to a particular aspect of Stephanie J. Block's portrayal of Elphaba. When dealing with Dorothy or other people whom it was in her best interest to scare, she used a dead-on Margaret Hamilton Wicked Witch voice.


	4. The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Author's Notes: Okay, so I'm not really all that crazy about this chapter. Really, chapters 3,4, and 5 were originally one big chapter, hence the odd start-up of this one. I had to break up the monster-chapter because it was… well, a monster. One warning—the flashback scene is quite dark.

Chapter 4: The Knowledge of Good and Evil

_"Tell me… I want to know. I want to know about Elphaba."_

Glinda pulled the handkerchief down from her eyes.

She had given the name to Dorothy, yet found herself swiftly offended when the girl chose to use it. It felt as if she'd invaded something private, something precious, something she was not entitled to. Her voice mirrored the offence. "You want to know about her? I'm not sure how much I can tell you. It's I who should be asking you that question, really. You saw more of her in the last week than I have in two years."

"But was that… all of her?" Dorothy felt foolish, and knew she must sound so. "Was that… real?"

"It was more real than she is now."

Dorothy tried again. "If the… if everything…" She could not make herself say _melting_. If everything hadn't happened that way… at the end… do you think she would have hurt me? To get the shoes?"

She was not sure what to expect in answer, but certainly she did not expect Glinda to laugh. Yet laugh Glinda did, though sadly. "Shoes…if Elphie had known it would all end over _shoes_." She laughed again, faraway, and Dorothy wondered if she was going to a place where it was a little easier to bear.

"They weren't magic? When the Munchkins asked you to give them to me, they said they were magic."1

"They were."

Glinda was diverting, and Dorothy saw it clearly. She had seen her Uncle Henry do it countless times, usually when dealing with a displeased Aunt Em—and Aunt Em was displeased a good deal of the time. What she could not understand was the reason behind the diversion. Why should not Glinda want to defend one who had so obviously been dear to her? Was it possible, despite all the refuted rumors, that there was no defense to be made for the Wicked Witch of the West after all? Dorothy wondered at the sudden sense of comfort—_relief—_that came with that possibility. What was it after all, she questioned herself, that she wished Glinda to tell her? She had supposed, for the sake of believing in the good of humanity, that she'd wanted her growing suspicions confirmed. But did she—really? If the Witch of the West was Wicked indeed, the world will be simple again, wouldn't it?

If Elphaba Thropp was Wicked, would the wave of guilt, a wavering threat trembling over her head, recede? Dorothy, caught in the riptide, was out too far to get back. "But would she have?" she asked again.

"Not the Elphaba I knew," said Glinda, because it was all she could say. She didn't know how much of Elphaba had become the Wicked Witch of the West, or how much of the Wicked Witch of the West had been her Elphie. She would never know that, now. She was left with only the knowledge of her own wish-- that the Witch of the West had been as much a veneer as the Good Witch of the North had been.

_"I can do whatever I want—I'm the Wicked Witch of the West!" _

_'Oh, Elphie, tell me you didn't believe that.'_

It was not a difficult thing to believe-- that Elphaba had decided in her anger to give the people what they expected of her at last. This, Glinda could understand. From her privileged youth she had learned to give society what they desired, not out of vengeance or vindication but to gain her own ends. She'd given them an impossibly perfect, ever-smiling princess—the epitome of all that was good. As Galinda she had actually believed in the image she'd created. Galinda may have been shallow and unknowingly selfish, but she was not a willing hypocrite. Glinda knew better, and was.

_"So much of me is made from what I learned from you…"_

'_Or tell me that you **did** believe it, Elphaba. At least that's honest. You were always honest.'_

It didn't matter, really, Glinda realized. Even if it had truly been the Wicked Witch that she'd held that last hour, she was no less her friend.

Either way, what she did know for certain was that even if the Witch was real… with her rage and her cruel words and the girl sobbing in fear behind a locked door… that her heart—grown hard and bitter—was still good. She could not believe that it had turned. She could never believe that, not of Elphaba. Not of Elphie. Elphie would not have hurt a hair of that child's head, and Glinda knew that more surely than she could feel her own breath.

_"Promise me!"_

But she could not say it, and it quietly broke her heart.

Presented with another of Glinda's sidestepping replies, Dorothy was cognizant of a change between them, a shifting of roles. In their verbal dance she was now in lead, without being at all aware of how she had gotten there. She pressed forward now, and Glinda retreated… though all the while her misgivings grew about wanting the truth at all. She had gone too far to let off with the mystery half-solved. It was beyond her ability to stop. It was like worrying a scratch or scrape, with the same far-off promise of trouble and pain. Dorothy may have dreamed, once, of a place where there wasn't any trouble, where troubles melted like lemon drops—but the truth of it was that she'd always had a way, without any conscious thought, of inviting it. It was this curiosity, mindless of consequences that had led her day after day past Miss Gulch's garden with Toto when another route would have been just as easy. It had caused her to walk along the rails of the hog pen on gusty afternoons and to leave her farm home while thunderclouds gathered and darkened on the horizon. She would have wondered about this strange drive within herself were she old enough for such self-analysis. It was something the adults in her life would have discussed round the supper table after bedtime, were their minds not filled with the constant demands of farm life.

There were so many questions. "What about the Tin Man? Why did she turn him into tin?" About the Lion she asked nothing. She did not need to. Much as she loved him, his story had already unraveled.

"We never discussed her reason," was all Glinda would say, flatly, eyes fixed blankly ahead in miserable obligation. It was true enough, however. Elphaba had never told her what happened in that fatal circle of she, her sister, and Boq. Oh, yes—_Boq_—Glinda would never forget his name again. By cobbling together overheard conversations between the Wizard and Morrible, the varying stories of the Ozian folk, and by adding her own knowledge of the previous goings-on at the Governor's Palace in Munchkinland, she'd managed to come up not with a definite version of the tragic tale but a definite conclusion. Elphaba had saved Boq's life the only way she could think to at the time. His trauma and devastation, combined with the fear of one witch and his resentment of the other had caused the Munchkinlander to overlook what should have been obvious to him.

Glinda's shock was absolute when the girl's next words mirrored her own hidden thoughts.

"She told me a reason. She told me that she was trying to help him. That she was trying to save his life and it went wrong."

"She said that to you?" Glinda's words were out at once, her mask dropping if only for a moment. Suspicion immediately followed. _Conspiracy? _Were these baited questions, borne not of a desire to learn but of entrapment? The theory was short-lived. Everything she knew of Dorothy denied it, besides the fact that it made little logical sense. Who could be behind it but Morrible, and what could the now-imprisoned press secretary learn from Dorothy that she did not already know?

"She said a lot of things, and so many of them are true! She said that the Wizard is a coward, and he is, and that he couldn't get me home—he can't. _Was_ she only trying to help? She said that she tried to help everyone, and they turned on her. That they didn't want the truth, and they'd turn on me too someday if I wasn't careful… is that right?" Glinda said nothing, but her face had grown rigid, her eyes wet. "Please," she added simply, as plaintive as she had ever been.

Glinda opened her mouth to lie, and she could not do it. The lies died on her tongue and she was silent. Omission, she could have handled. Evasion, she could have done. But Dorothy, though Glinda suspected she did not yet know it, wanted only verification for a truth she already possessed. Nothing could counter it but a flat-out untruth, and the words stuck in her throat. Lip trembling, she turned her face away—and Dorothy knew.

"It's true, isn't it?" said the girl softly, with no trace of accusation. "If it wasn't you would just say so." With every syllable came dawning realization… and dawning fear. She blurted forward, past anything Glinda had silently confirmed. "But if she wasn't really a wicked witch then why— "

Like Miss Gulch finally coming for Toto with a warrant in her hand, promised-for strife caught up with Dorothy. She realized it now-- somewhere deep inside she must have wanted the Witch to be wicked after all. She was ashamed of it, but it was what it was and she could not let it go. Was this how Eve had felt, if only a little, with the bitten apple in her hand? She had the knowledge she sought but the knowledge was terrible. Could she get back to where she was before? No. Like the pedal of a bicycle kicked backward, she only spun helplessly, rapidly. Mind racing, Dorothy sought to erect any possible defense against the onslaught. Glinda! Glinda was not exactly trustworthy, was she? That put the word of only the two witches against everyone else she had spoken to in Oz, including her friends—her _heroes._ No, no, that was no use, she had already been through that, already proved that… Instead, Dorothy pulled up every threat she'd heard with trembling, every rasp in her ear, every tear she had cried in her captivity. She remembered cold stone towers and the void of the sky. Glinda may have said that the Witch wouldn't have hurt her and physically she had not... but for that one moment…and the Witch hadn't meant to… Dorothy turned from the thought. There were more ways than the physical to hurt a person. How could someone with good in them have possibly treated her the way the Witch had?

_"Have I scared you so badly as that?"_

" – then why did she kidnap—"

_"Kidnapping? Is that what you call detaining an assassin where you come from?"_

"--why wouldn't she let me go? I tried to give her the shoes, but they wouldn't come off! I couldn't help it!"

Glinda was a badly shaken as the girl. If she had wanted catharsis, this was too much; too much blood had been let. It had not come in a shouted declaration as she had imagined, but with nothing said at all. The girl knew—not all of it, but enough. She didn't know the political specifics. Even so, she had found out the very thing that Elphaba had wanted hidden-- ironically, coming most of the way to the truth through the words of Elphaba herself. That didn't stop Glinda from feeling like the lowest traitor who ever broke their word. At the very time she should have lied, she had not been able to… and Dorothy was the least of her worries. Glinda had the instinctual feeling that when she told the girl not to reveal the story, her command would be heeded. It was also not a difficult matter to keep a close eye on her until she could be sent home… _if _she could be sent home… No, the real trouble lay elsewhere. There was but a slim minority in Oz who would even think to question Elphaba's supposed evil nature, and an even slimmer one who had openly supported her-- but both existed. There were the Animals and their sympathizers, as well as some wise souls who simply chose to question Morrible's speeches and the Wizard's policies. It was an easy thing to go along with a lie, but how was she to answer these people when they came to her with the truth? How was she to right the wrongs done to the Animals yet speak against Elphaba at the same time? It was a nearly impossible challenge even for someone with her social and political expertise, and at the first test she had crumbled like over-fired pottery.

"It wasn't the shoes. The only magic they had she gave them herself. It was Nessa's death."

"But that was an accident! I never wanted it to happen!"

"I know," replied Glinda, sincerely but not gently. "But it wasn't an accident." She took a deep shuddering breath. "Elphaba knew that. She must have suspected you had a part in it and the shoes only helped prove her case. Oh, I never should have given them to you…" she moaned, pressing her soaked handkerchief against her eyes.

"But I told her… I told her I was sorry!" Dorothy protested, then grew still with pause. "Or no… I didn't, did I?" The words came slowly. Her brown eyes lifted and sought Glinda's, then dropped again as her question turned inward.

"_Prove it…"_

"She may have been past the place where she could believe you," Glinda said after some time, putting down her handkerchief as she felt her hands and spine stiffen. She did not like her own words—the sense that she must defend her friend to this girl. However, she thought that she could read in Dorothy's nature a desire to learn, a drive to know the true way of things even when it was safer and simpler not to. It was not unlike the way Elphaba had been, there in the classrooms of Shiz—and afterwards. The girl was fighting it now—Glinda could see the signs—but she had asked to begin with. That was more than Glinda could say for most people she had known. And so she went on, telling Elphaba's story-- for her own sake or for Dorothy's education she could hardly tell.

"You have to understand what she'd been through," she continued, the icy distance in her tone beginning to thaw. "It all started when… well, no… it started from the beginning of her life, I suppose. She was shunned from the moment she was born, all because she was… _different_. Her own father hated her--"2

"Why?" asked Dorothy, more confused than shocked at what was, to her, a foreign concept. Fathers did not hate their children; that was not how families worked. She had been very young when her own father died and her memories of him were vague and dream-like. Still, she remembered very well how big and strong he had seemed to her in his Stetson and tall boots, and how warm and safe she had felt when he was near. 'My little Dottie' – that had been his special nickname for her. What would it have been like to have this source of absolute love and protection give off _hatred_ instead? Dorothy could not imagine. She had always supposed that it was the hardest thing in the world to have lost her father and mother. She wondered now if their hatred would have been far worse.

"He blamed her for her mother's death, and for Nessarose being crippled the way she was. Of course those things weren't her fault—they were his if they were anybody's. But he wouldn't see that. Nessarose was everything to him and Elphaba was nothing— nothing except a servant for her sister. He gave Nessa those _horrible_ shoes to prove it." Both looked down and indeed in that moment the shoes were horrible. They innocuously glittered a savage, beautiful red, completely unknowing of the tragedy that had been wreaked around them. Dorothy wanted nothing more than to kick them away. "He died blaming Elphaba still, and then Nessarose took over where he left off." Glinda wavered and again tried to fight back a flood of tears with a steadying breath. "Don't misunderstand—Nessa loved Elphaba, in her own way. I remember when we were at school… but things changed. She got so caught up in her own misfortune that she couldn't care about anyone else, not really. She took out her misery on her own people. They suffered, and Elphaba suffered. You see—she believed it."

_"It's my fault."_

_"Oh, Nessa please, please, please forgive me!"_

"Her sister died blaming her too. Elphaba would have done anything in the world to help her, but Nessa didn't see that. It was the same with the rest of the people in this place. Oz turned on Elphaba—or most of it, anyway. The Animals tried to help her, but how much could they do? Those who _could_ have… those who should have stood by her looked the other way. Only one person would stand by her—and they killed him for it. They killed him for it on the day you came, on the same day Nessa died." Her voice cracked and broke. There was no stopping the tears then. Forgetting her handkerchief entirely, Glinda paused to swipe the back of her hand across her eyes, only succeeding in spreading glistening wet bands across her face. Her nose began to run, and she sniffed wretchedly even as she knew that she _must_ gain mastery of herself. If this was to be her lot, and if she was to keep her promise, she had to learn to bear it. When the Ozians asked her of the Witch of the West, her voice would have to be neutral, her eyes dry. When Fiyero's tortured body was found one day soon, she could not break down weeping with the stares of the people upon her. Dorothy was a witness to her grief, but she must be the last person to ever see tears shed by Glinda of the North.

Dorothy, wanting escape, had let herself be drawn into the story. She didn't see it for the noose it was, laid out shining by fate, ready to catch and hurt her. For the first time the thought flitted across her mind that Glinda's mourning was intermingled with personal remorse. Was Glinda the one who had looked away from her friend? Why had she been a part of the celebration of Nessarose's death? What did she know about who was behind it? Dorothy's mind, however, refused to dwell on these questions. They were too objective, too distanced. They might have saved her from what was to come. But Elphaba's story had hit her deep—and far too close.

In a single day, Elphaba Thropp had lost two loved ones to violent death. In a single day, Dorothy Gale had lost both her parents. One short day had made her an instant orphan. Countless times she had heard comments from well-meaning people about how fortunate it was (as if losing both parents could ever be considered fortunate) that she had been so young when it happened-- that the tragedy had occurred before she could remember much about it. It was true that she had few sharp images of that time—but Dorothy remembered plenty. She remembered how she'd _felt_. There had been fear, of course. Incomprehension. Panic. Uncertainty. Overwhelming grief. And _anger_. Her parents had been run over by a wagon and left there for dead in the hot Kansas dust.3 No one knew why. No one knew who had done it. In Sunday School Dorothy had been taught that she was to love her enemies. That she was to forgive, seventy times seven, whether the person asked her forgiveness or not—whether she felt they _deserved_ it or not. She knew this was right, but it was difficult. The person who had killed her parents had not asked her forgiveness. They4 had not even _stopped_.

Dorothy was not certain that she had forgiven that person, not completely, and she would _never _forget. Still, she had not held on to her anger. There came the time when she could think of her parents' death without the emotion rising inside. It came occasionally, though, on days when she was not expecting it. Days when she felt particularly put aside at the busy farm, and particularly lonely. Days when she felt called on to defend the loved ones she had left. She'd gotten in trouble once for raising her voice to a bank clerk who'd been disrespectful to poor Uncle Henry (even though she'd always thought Aunt Em was secretly proud of what she'd done). When Miss Gulch had swung at her beloved Toto with a rake, Dorothy'd had quite a few thoughts of pummeling the old miser with the rake herself—thoughts that she didn't imagine her Sunday School teacher would be any too pleased about, even though it WAS Miss Gulch.

She wondered if that was how the Witch had felt, on a much larger scale. It wouldn't have made her actions _right_, any more than her own wicked thoughts about Miss Gulch were right—but it was something that Dorothy could understand. And perhaps, she thought, in that way… she wasn't so very different from the Witch at all.

Glinda, pulling through her tears, seemed to have read her silent question. "After they died, Elphaba was... something snapped. Everything she must have been holding in, everything that happened to her… it was just too much. She'd had too much. You got the brunt end of it." _'But then again,' _Glinda thought,_ 'if I thought someone were coming to kill me, I wouldn't exactly be inviting them in for tea.'_ She held the words in. They could do no good. "I don't imagine it was pleasant," she added instead.

It was an understatement, that she knew, but Glinda didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to hear the stories that Dorothy could tell. Instead she told a tale of her own, from an easier time when she could still understand Elphaba—or had thought she could. "I'm sure Elphie didn't help things any, the mean old thing," she said with a fond, sad little smile. "Even back in school she was always good at scaring people. Even when she didn't want to be." The smile faded with the remembrance of fellow students shrinking back in disgust, afraid lest they accidentally brush against a green hand in a crowded doorway. She remembered _herself _at first, religiously sticking to her own side of their dorm room. So many months wasted that could have been more time—just a little more time—with the friend she had lost. "Elphaba could be… abrasive. And honest-- people think it's the same thing, you know. She was always ready to bite before someone else could bite her first. But she was soft on the inside. It took me a long time to see it, but she was. Everything else was just protection. Just walls. I don't think anybody could blame her for that."

"I remember the first dance we had that school year," she continued, her mind deep in the past. Two tears slipped down her cheeks at the memory of Fiyero as he had been, astride the top steps of the ballroom's sweeping staircase-- every inch the careless, cocky, completely charming prince. He'd been so handsome, so _perfect._ "I'd played a horrible trick on Elphie-- don't look so surprised. Everyone was laughing at her—not any more than usual, really. But this time she looked like—like she hadn't been expecting it. It was awful. You know, I think that was the first time I'd ever felt guilty for something? So I went up… and I took her hand.5 If she'd pushed me away I would've deserved it, but she didn't. She looked so _surprised_. Like no one else had ever… and she held on. We were friends then. She was my friend. I should have held on…"

As Glinda drifted on her memories, Dorothy choked, wide-eyed and silent, in the stranglehold of one of own. The noose had tightened, little by little but so, so sure. She had thought to smother out the truth of the Witch by remembering her time in the tower. By letting herself float, unattached, on the surface of Glinda's reminiscing until she could leave the room and reach safety. Both ways conspired against her, dragging her under as she struggled. It was no use. Dorothy relived again and again that frozen moment when she had nearly reached out a hand herself. All she could see of the Witch now was Elphaba standing before her with desperate eyes.

_"Give me my shoes, so you can go."_

_"I'll send you home… you have my word."_

There was another time Dorothy had seen her look that way.

It was her most repressed memory. She'd tried to hide it behind the parades. Helpless now to stop it, Dorothy closed her eyes as it came.

--------------------

_They were thirty strong, the witch hunters-- a crushing, riotous mass of vengeance that knocked Dorothy to the ground at the first eager charge. Thirty men against one Witch, whose once-imposing figure seemed so small, so lost in their midst. She fought back at first, taking her forced stand in the center of them all. She cackled, she hissed like an enraged cat, matching them swing for swing as she flung out her broom in wide circles._

_The weapons of the mob were barbed-- sick and sharp in the red-orange torchlight. The Witch's broom, for all its powers of fear and flight, was mere straw and cord batting away at pitchfork, scythe, and ax. Where was her fire, thought Dorothy, where were her hexes? Quick as thought, one weapon found an opening and caught her across her outstretched arm. Black wool tore, green skin opened, red blood sprang forth as the broom fell onto the stones below. Dorothy heard the hollow clatter as it met the floor, caught the surprised shrieking yelp of the Witch like a dog against a tight chain—and then there was nothing but the hunters' crowing yell._

_The man who had done it was young— probably not a man yet. A boy. His cheeks were smooth—unshaved, unlined. At any other moment he would have looked like any one of the young men that Dorothy could name from home, lined up among the wagons after church to ogle the girls in their Sunday finest. Now this boy stared at the Witch with horror in his eyes—not at her face, Dorothy could see, but at the place where her fingers clutched and blood oozed between them. He could not seem to get over the blood. Dorothy had been told that the Witch did not bleed. She had been told that her evil was so great and so old that it had dried all the natural fluids of her body into sand.__6__ He must have been told the same thing. As the Witch hunched over in pain, the boy fell back in pain of his own even as his companions clapped his shoulders and roared their approval. The shovel he had used, the sharp curved edge smeared, dropped to the ground as he struggled free of their heavy hands and fled._

_The blood was in the water then and the sharks were swarming. Dorothy had seen ants on a dead grasshopper once, in the flowerbed near the porch. It had nearly made her ill—and she a farm girl used to the natural way of things. Zeke had laughed at her reaction, but not meanly. "That's what they call a feeding frenzy," he'd told her. " It's not pretty but it's nature." Was this nature, too? If it was Dorothy did not want to know it, did not ever want to know. The faces in the mob were grotesque, as if they'd been molded out of clay with the features pushed and twisted in every wrong direction, twisted in ways that no human face should go. There was a difference, Dorothy thought, between the swarming ants and these swarming men. The ants, though pitiless, had no hate. She could feel hatred growing in the room, pure and wild, a presence all its own. The mob, gluttonous, fed it and fed off it in turn. It rose, dark and winged. Though Dorothy had heard numbered every wrongdoing of the Witch and experienced her wrath firsthand, could even all those things have birthed…**this**?_

"_Two wrongs don't make a right," Aunt Em had taught her._

"_Never return evil for evil," she had heard on Sunday mornings. "But return evil with good."_

_This, Dorothy was sure, was evil through and through. _

_There were a few who saw and felt what she did—a few whose eyes cleared. They broke away and stumbled from the chamber. The Lion finally bawled and bolted—afraid of the Witch or afraid of his fellow witch hunters Dorothy could not tell, though she could speak for herself. They were more terrifying than the Witch could have ever aspired to. They were more terrifying and more real—more terrifying **because**__they were more real. The Witch, with her green skin and black robes, was something Dorothy had only known from myth. The mobsmen, most of them in plain brown trousers and home-sewn shirts, could have walked down the main street of her prairie town and never turned a head._

_Those hunters who remained didn't move closer to the Witch, but continued to swipe and harry with their long-handled weapons. They were only brave at a distance. None, Dorothy noticed, held a knife, or even a sword. No—no they were not brave at all, not one. They were cowards worse by far than the Lion, shivering in the corner and twisting his tail. He at least was honest in his cowardice, while the others played at being fierce. Not a one of them would have stood alone. Not a one of them would look the Witch in the eyes._

_The Witch's pain intensified and became something more entirely when the Tin Man stepped forward, the cheers of the crowd behind him. The Witch… **wilted**… then—wilted like parched wheat. "You can always tell when the fight goes out of a critter," Zeke said once, and it was true. The fight went out of the Witch. Was it the sight of the woodcutter's axe at the ready, held by a man of solid metal? What did a witch who could disappear in a cloud of smoke or conjure up a column of fire have to fear? Why didn't she do it? Was it something else? The Witch looked as if she were drowning, as if she'd been beaten. Could she feel the arrow of hatred in the room as Dorothy could, all the worse for being its sole target? Wouldn't a Wicked Witch expect it as her due? _

_Eternal seconds passed as the Tin Man, the most vocal of the Witch's opponents, stared at her and did not speak. She stared back at him with dull eyes dark as coal. Her fingers dug into the rough wall behind her. Waiting. One of the men, taking advantage of the diversion, stuck in a thieving hand to grab the broom from before her feet. She made no move to stop him. As he hoisted it above his head and the crowd roared in approval, the Tin Man spoke at last—one word—_

"_Elphaba?"_

_--but Dorothy could scarcely hear and could not understand. The witch hunters were all but baying like hounds, screaming—screaming for the man of tin to kill her. _

"_Kill her! **Kill the Witch!**"_

_Through it came the sound of quivering metal. It grew in a rattling crescendo, ringing louder and harsher until Dorothy's eardrums rattled with it. In an explosion of movement the Tin Man whirled towards his fellows, face welded in a new expression of anguish. Silvery rivulets snaked down his cheeks-- tears of ore—as he shouted to the hunters at the top of his voice._

_Dorothy could not make out his words. No sooner had he begun but there came a deep, dark, rumbling of disgust. Of thwarted violence. Of dissatisfaction. She knew at once that it was the most dangerous sound in all the world. It could only breed something terrible._

_And it did._

_In two seconds, the Tin Man hit the wall of the chamber, his metal frame flung through the air by the rage of the mob. _

_In the next, a man rushed forward from the crowd and put the muzzle of a gun against the throat of the Witch._

_At that exact moment, Oz became too real to Dorothy Gale._

_It was then, and not any time before then, that Dorothy realized she'd never fully accepted the fact that Oz was real. She had told herself it was not a dream, yet there must have been a last little bit of herself—a part that she could not get to—that didn't quite believe it. Her wonder and terror had been real, yet there must have been some part of herself that hoped she would wake up at any moment. Her dealings with the Witch had been in magic spells, wands, ruby slippers—all things more suited to the world of make- believe than in the heartland world that was Dorothy's sole experience. She had not felt a full part of it, this killing of the Witch. Even the mob, while made up of men that looked so much like those back home, could have been out of a medieval story with their torches and pitchforks. But a gun… A gun, she knew. A gun was cold steel reality. A gun was shot-torn animals brought home for the supper pot and shot-torn men carried to the town doctor. There were no guns in fairy tales._

_Time seemed thrown into suspended animation. Before Dorothy's horrified eyes, everyone in the room moved like mud-bogged cattle, every move amplified. The mob surged forward. The gun pressed upward. The Witch's eyes slid closed. The Scarecrow lunged towards Dorothy's feet, panic sewn into his face. His straw-stuffed body proved too light and he was tossed back into the savage sea. From somewhere came a woman's choked scream. There were no women among the witch hunters and Dorothy wondered if the scream was her own, ripped from her mouth unknowing. She felt outside herself. She felt swallowed. The room stretched and roared._

_And then through it came the words._

"_Don't shoot! Don't shoot! The water! **Throw the water!**"_

From the corner of her eye she saw it—a bucket, full near to the brim. Through the utter chaos and confusion that constricted the room and pounded her brain Dorothy had the sudden thought that the words had come from the Scarecrow. The bucket was what he'd been trying to reach. His command was the only solid thing on which she could grasp, and in the next second she grasped too the heavy wooden pail. There it was in her hands. There was the water arching through the air, onto the Witch and over the frothing mob.7

--------------------

When the memory ended, Dorothy knew she had come to the end of herself. There were no more defenses. There was nothing more to learn. The truth was before her. She sat shaking in the aftermath, trying to make explanations to herself, to Glinda, to anyone.

Most of all to Elphaba, who despite everything had not truly been a Wicked Witch at all.

"I just got so afraid," she told the room in a quivering voice. Eyes fixed in an unblinking stare, she did not see Glinda's brow crease, her head tilt. "All those people were there, all the shouting… then there was the water and I didn't know it would hurt her! I was just so frightened!"

"You didn't mean for it to happen," said Glinda in a strange voice.

Dorothy's face crumpled. "But _she_ didn't know that!" she cried, and burst into tears.

1 I took some liberties here, as we never see the giving-the-shoes scene in the musical. It isn't realistic, for characterization and canon reasons, to have Dorothy just pull the pair of shoes off poor Nessa's feet. In every version of the story, Glinda gives them to her, albeit with different motives. Bookverse doesn't quite work for this, and neither does the MGM film or Baum. In the musical it is hinted (or at least I took it that way) that spite may have played a factor in her giving the shoes to Dorothy. I softened this a bit by having her do as the Munchkins asked (which would make sense for them—passing on a symbol of their oppression to the person they feel freed them) rather than acting out of pure, out-and-out jealousy. Many thanks to Valieara for her help on this.

2 Going with musicalverse here.

3 Another liberty taken, done for plot purposes. I realize that in Maguire Dorothy's parents drowned, but it doesn't specify in any other source and I figured I could get away with it. (:

4 Yes, I know this is improper English. It would just really lose something if I wrote "he or she had not even stopped."

5 Yes, there was the dancing, but I didn't want to do a full scene re-cap here when only one part will figure in the plot.

6 From Baum.

7 My own take on the musical's melting sequence.


End file.
